This I believe

I believe I sit at Jesus’s feet every day.
Looking up in pure awe and wonder... 

sometimes in utter confusion.

I know I must do the best I can.

I know I have to allow compassion to guide even the hardest of decisions.

I believe this life is worth it
The pain, the joy
The love received and love lost…
I believe it’s all worth it.

I believe everyone has a great struggle
And we need to remember this when we hate, or feel jealously, or judge.
We may not see it, or know it, or feel it
But a struggle is within all of us.

I believe you can’t spend too much time in worry and fear.
You must be a rock
You must shelter the storm with your resolve.

Anticipate the sunrise - Be steady, be still.

I believe you must have hope
Without it, there is nothing.
Material things slip from our fingers
People come and go,
but hope is eternal

I believe inner peace is possible.
You just have to want it bad enough.
Accept nothing less from yourself.

This I believe.

Happy Birthday to Me :)

Today is my birthday, in case you didn't figure that out from the title. I was going through some old journals at work, and I found a hastily scribbled poem that I wrote last summer, I think sometime in June. Anyway, I really like it, and thought it would be fitting to post here on my birthday.

Today

Just for today
I'll climb that mountain
and come down the other side
I'll leave behind that part of me that almost died

Today I'll keep going
at that steady pace
without fearing the tiger at my back
It's no longer a race

I won't run to you
or away
I won't hope secretly
that you'll ask me to stay

I'll hold myself
with my own two arms
I'll tilt my head towards God
when my heart sounds it's intruder alarm

For today,
you'll see the girl I once was,
a thousand years before
I swear, today, you'll be able to see so much more

A Haiku for June

Humid balmy breeze
my hair sticks to my forehead
makes me feel dizzy

Your face hot and red
calling me closer to you
we laugh and we melt

Jump in cold water
float underneath the surface
there you'll find heaven

It's the first summer
where I can recall
what it feels like to be alive

Sun rises, sun sets
Beach sands carry in the wind
My eyes close, joyful

A poem for grandpa

Still Fighting



Grandpa showered us little girls in rare silver coins.

Half-dollars, Silver B. Anthony’s, maybe even Pocahontas’s,

He’d pull them out of his pocket and we’d run to him

I have hundreds now, a child’s treasure box.


I remember many things,

But mostly gathering ‘round a recliner while grandpa recited “Paul Revere’s Ride,”

gesturing boldy with his war-crippled fingers,

speaking the 130-line poem from memory.



His voice boomed and I listened wide-eyed, eating slices of frozen pizza.

I didn’t understand belfries and British muskets.

Yet every word of his poetic rhyme mesmerized this young mind,

and there kindled a love for literature and poetry.


Grandpa always dresses in his Sunday best, even sitting at home

Crisp trousers, gold rings and a sweater vest

A comb ran through his hair before a picture.


There is no a holiday, nor get-together

Without grandpa raising a glass to his family

With an Irish limerick or “ode to someone.”

Never passing up a moment to teach, humor and inspire.



When grandpa talks, it hushes my boisterous family

And although they won’t admit it,

They fear him when he approaches a game of poker,

Dropping that heavy purple cloth bag of change on the table


He is many things, my grandpa:

A man who questions the world around him,

A professor, a poet, an orator, a veteran,

but mostly the proud patriarch of his family.


Now 85 years young and married 65

We almost lost him in May

Survived two gunshot wounds in Iwo Jima and now,

A third heart attack, the heart still beating – his body refusing to let go


I bet he’s wondering “Why me?”

As famously repeated in his Iwo Jima poem.

They said he’d die, but no-

He’s on the homeland, yet fighting still


Grandpa makes a mockery of the doctor’s assumptions,

And keeps waking up in the morning.

They take his vitals and say he’ll expire soon,

But, no, they don’t know my grandpa.



He jokes with nurses, that glint still in his eyes

Says he’s given up reading for Lent,

And raises his hands in a helpless shrug when someone asks him if he’d like a beer,

Answering “I’ll try,” when I say he better be at my September wedding.



Robbed of his ears in the war and now his heart,

A valve damaged on the operating table,

Grandpa sits in a nursing home, biding away his time.

Smiling lovingly into grandma’s eyes, and writing her love notes.




My grandpa's name is William Madden. At left, is the book in which his poem was published, and the book was also named after him by the author. You can see his poem by looking inside the electronic copy on Amazon. Also, the author wrote a nice note to him on the first couple of pages.