So I don’t forget myself

Описание: Sing, O voice that knows the storms,
of this man who walked through fever seas,
who carried a growing shadow in his chest,
and steered his life through mountains, engines,
love, loss, and the long quiet after.

Sing of my life, son of Grace,
who learned early that the world tilts,
and that some nights never end
they only change their shape.

In the apartment of my mother’s mother,
where relics whispered louder than the walls,
I burned with fever bright enough
to turn a model ship into an ocean.

The storm rose from the carpet,
the waves from the wallpaper,
and the little wooden boat
the coolest thing I’d ever seen
became a vessel too small
for the size of the sea beneath it.

And in that same room,
a box held an I.U.D. wrapped in a note:
“The miracle that created little Franny.”
A child reading the riddle of existence
before he knew the words for birth or loss.

My grandmother fading.
My cat Midnight soon to be gone.
The world shifting under me
before my feet were steady enough to stand.

And in the fever’s heart,
a pill began to grow
a small thing meant to be swallowed,
swelling into something that chased me,
rolling slow, rolling certain,
a demand too big for any mouth.

This was a monster,
and it learned my name.

When the fever broke,
the world did not return to its old shape.

My grandmother left the earth.
Midnight slipped beneath the wheel of a Cadillac,
a soft creature crushed out of her sleeping place.

Two anchors gone.
Two lights out.
A boy learning that love
does not bargain with fate.

The pill rolled on.

Then came the mountains.

Tahoe, where the air thins
and the storms arrive like gods.

Four, five years of snowdrifts
that swallowed cars whole,
of the great storm of ninety‑six
when the sky dropped its entire weight
and dared me to keep moving.

I learned to fly there
a pilot’s license earned in thin air,
where engines gasp and men must not.

I learned that storms can be read,
that winds have moods,
that the sky is a teacher
with no patience for lies.

I learned that fear can be flown through
if the wings hold.

Florida’s heat.
Kentucky’s fields.
My life in motion,
carrying the pill in my shadow,
never outrunning it,
never letting it catch me.

Time crossed states like chapters,
each one a new coastline,
each one a new attempt
to find a place where the dream
would loosen its grip.

But the pill rolled on.

Then came the Mooney
a 1957 wooden‑winged creature
with more screws than sense,
a cowling that fought me,
a battery that needed coaxing,
a plane that demanded devotion.

Jump‑starting it was madness.
Flying it was faith.
Owning it was a pact with the absurd.

But I loved it,
because it was honest:
difficult, stubborn, alive.

A machine that mirrored life
weathered, determined,
and unwilling to quit.

Then came the woman
whose storms were not in the sky
but in the mind.

A house where truth bent,
where blame shifted like sand,
where reality had tides.

I didn’t recognize the weather,
even though I’d sailed it as a child.

But time was kind,
and we had a son.

A boy born into the storm,
and I became the wall
that kept the winds from him.

Holding the line.
Telling the truth.
Steadying his feet on the ground
when someone else shook it.

I loved being a father,
storming the fever ocean.

And though the years pulled us apart,
and the boy grew into a man
in a distant city,
the love remains—
quiet, steady,
a lighthouse waiting for return.

Now I live in a house in Georgia,
sixty‑four years behind me,
three cats for company:
Luna, Merlin, Whirl—
the keepers of the quiet.

No storms to outrun.
No planes to coax.
No mountains to climb.
No child to protect.

Just the silence,
and the pill still rolling
in dreams and memory.

This is the hardest chapter—
not because of danger,
but because there is nothing to strive for,
and a man who has survived storms
does not know what to do
with calm seas.

But my life is not over.
My journey is not done.

I stand at the edge of the quiet,
listening for the next wind,
the next truth,
the next shape the dream will take.

This song is to remember,
so I don’t forget myself.

Sing of life—
we walk through fever oceans,
mountain storms,
mechanical madness,
love’s distortions,
and the long quiet after.

Sing of a life lived,
steered,
protected,
endured.

Sing so the story stays.
Sing so the dream loosens.
Sing as the pill keeps rolling.

Sing so I know:
life continues.