Good Men

When I turned sixty-three,

memories of such things visceral, 

prickly barbed, smelling of sweet,

sweaty landscapes, unvoiced,

still clamorous of families and children

strewn within my bones,

my head and teeth, and in the iron 

of my blood, unseen, but certainly felt.

Then the unpacking.

Sometimes a reminder, a trigger,

the snap, and we wonder, 

What if…? or Why this...?

Where on earth were we going

with all those things, 

with all those attitudes?

Was it somewhere 

beyond everything littered here?

It’s a new thing this age.

We cannot minimize 

the truth and sadness of the things 

and people we left behind.

When men have learned

finally how things work,

how to live with the notion of our

sensitive male ego,

how to talk with our eyes,

how life should be lived,

how we understand mercy, humility, 

and a little something about women,

we realized fully the pain of achieving wisdom,

our souls laid vulnerable to the vast unknown.

from: A Preface to the Universe

Unpub. MS p.5

Old Juan

A painting by Wood Woolsey (1930)

Phoenix Art Museum

Phoenix, Arizona

You have had your time in the sun.

Your hands, stiffened by hard work, 

are now at ease on your lap.

A cane helps you get around.

Memories are thinned and uncertain.

Are there old friends still alive?

Do you have children?

Who helps you day to day?

Your magnificent gray beard hides

the shape of your lips,

the jut of your chin;

your pants are ripped at the knees;

your boots have trod many miles;

your large, well-worn hat covers your head

to your eyebrows, 

but it’s about your eyes, old man,

a weary, world view of life you can’t hide.

You have been through dust storms of all seasons.

How many miles did you ride with the herds?

followed how many roads?

pierced how many lies?

Was there one great love?

One great loss?

Whatever it is you left behind,

you know you can’t go back.

Would you even want to?

But you have wisdom no one else has.

It matters, yes, but who is there to listen,

to take heed of the lessons of an old man?

Your weariness has caught up with you.

It’s your turn to sit in the shade and rest,

to watch a world go by with some disdain,

to nurse the silence of your final years

while a plant in the yard 

sprouts into new life.

from: Memories of things Left Behind

Unpub. MS p. 52

How Is Where About The Blue Round

 The child within the child within— 

I have questions:

How is the sky?

How is an egg?

How is an egg a sky?

What is the eye roundabout?

But...how is round?

Just round?

Or is the eye a round sky?

Or a blue egg?

Or a planet?

Where is the all get around?

Round, round get around like that.

Rabbits and quail especially get around.

How is especially?

Does it run and leap great distances?

Walk on muddy paths in bare feet?

Is a yawn an especially?

Or a speciality?

You mean like Javelinas and Coyotes?

How is madness?

When I saw you for the first time,

reason went mad.

Where would reason go?

When are the mountains invisible?

How does faith go to cry?

What is the how of a horseless horse.

Who is a roundabout 

stuck with the we of God.

from: A Preface to the Universe:

Love, Nature, & The Mysteries Within

Unpub. MS p.2

Silence

To some of us the world is blue with silence,
because silence is bright yellow, bright green,

and silence is wide and narrow,

full of prayers, full of good and evil.

And following along are the thunderous silences,

like empty sports stadiums, closed race tracks,

and shattering cruelties that surround us in red.

There are curiosities of silence, of the strong, silent type,

the quiet ones, those children who have been too quiet

for too long; the silence of the sulking, depressed, lonely,

contemplative, guilty, puzzler, wanderer, and lover.

There is the silence of love’s hidden work,

the burning silence of sunrise and sunset,

and when the music begins, silence deepens it.

For the troubled: outward silence; inward screams.

Make room for silence; live in the mercy of silence.

When you are in the noise of nature and you hear 

your footsteps and breathing, bow in that holy place.

Let silence be an art we practice.

from: Finding My Way: One Man's Quest for 

the Divine Presence  

Atmosphere Press 2026  p. 2

Three Poems About Getting Older

 Friends

By the time I realized I was getting older, 
I was sixty-two, divorced and lost in the tall grass.
Over time I denied my aching joints and muscles,
my increased vulnerabilities, and couldn't admit
that I was no longer invincible.
I realized that diseases not normally killers, could now be;
that my body felt like I carried too much of the world.
The hard realization of acceptance
eventually became unavoidable.

I’m seventy-seven and don’t like cooking for one;
I don’t like sleeping alone, and I’m finished with dating.
I’m lost in the age of memories, missing my wife
and our shared memories, estranged from my brothers,
sometimes feeling loneliness and depression,
decidedly unmoored and irrelevant.

So I drink to dull all that.
I sit with my favorite wine or tequila
in a strange universe of silence and solitude,
enjoying my art collection and counting my blessings,
at peace that I am friends with whatever
I’m sipping during the evening’s
waning glow.

Life Support

It is difficult to let go losses,
pain, and disappointments;
of things you think should never
have happened but did.
Some things have had no closure
and we want that finality
but it is elusive.
Some surrender to isolation
and addictions.

Nostalgia settles in us—
what we did, the guilt we carry,
the sorrow, the good times,
and maybe a little obsession over
what could have been,
pestered by those what if questions.
And longing draws us in to what can never be.

We worry about our children who have to work
through their difficulties without our interference.
As children they needed us, then they didn’t.
Thankfully, my children are blessings
and are better parents than I was.

My memories of times and places intermix,
faces and voices fade in and out,
and the memories of my youth
are like looking through rain splattered windows.
Regardless, memory is the life support I hold onto,
despite the shadows and ghosts of the past.

Like Ice

The older I get,
the more vulnerable I feel.
I no longer have that feeling
of invincibility, like I could do
anything and live to tell about it.

Everyone is fearful—
there is too much of the world
in our lives,
too much bloodshed,
too much corruption,
too much greed, avarice, and gluttony.
We are limping and our hearts are horribly bruised.

I catch myself looking at alumni web sites,
counting the number of classmates and friends
who have passed away.
Most of them I hadn’t seen in sixty years,
but I still mourn the losses.

And despite my age, experience, and therapy,
I am unable to shake off the dark companion
that sits on my shoulder like ice.
No matter the therapeutic manipulations,
it’s just there, intractable, a part of my life,
one of many things I have to let be.

~Marc A. Crowley

The Owners Of Granada Street

Willcox, Arizona

The Late 1950s

Good friends, mostly boys, 

a few girls, but we all owned it.

No one fought over it.

It was our refuge from the eruptions

of domestic authority.

Baseball, softball, football,

tricycles, and bicycles,

roller skates with metal wheels 

(remember the key), and hide and seek.

Summer nights, sitting under the corner street light,

swarmed by flying insects, watching bats 

and the occasional owl; 

from boisterous to subdued,

it seemed to us like a pretty good world.

During our street games, 

we stepped aside for the few cars to pass.

The drivers knew us well.

The Baptist pastor and his blue-haired wife scowled,

but everyone else had friendly smiles and a wave.

Once in a while a neighbor

would stop and bat a few balls to us.

I have never forgotten their smiles,

looking like they were twelve again.

From: Small Places, Big Places, Everywhere

Unpub. MS p. 41

I'll Remember This Much

About 1962 

Willcox, Arizona

Let’s not think about where 

our old neighborhood went.

The street names have remained,

but searching will not find much of

anything removed. It just looks different.

Remember how we played basketball

in December’s chill and frost,

fingers becoming stiff and red,

and how the O’Connor’s blood hounds

chased the ball until one of them

bit a hole in it?

In spring, when all flowers blossomed,

the land seemed merciful and soft.

Then summer, with a few days too warm,

displayed new mirages in the distance,

silvery and ghostly and mysterious.

We rode our bikes out toward them

but soon realized we weren’t 

getting any closer.

I remember especially the autumn 

of my eighth grade, when boys and girls,

shimmering in fall colors and full blush,

noticed each other differently, 

gradually becoming aware 

of our awkward civilities, 

of boys’ cracking voices, that whatever began 

blossoming the previous summer 

made us fidgety and confused,

having no idea what was really happening.

In the tenth grade I realized what had

really happened, and that memory

has tickled me ever since.

From: Memories Of Things

Left Behind

Unpub. MS p. 46