“TRYING TO FIGURE OUT YESTERDAY”

To live In the moment, that’s what we do as we take hold of today,

The past Is no more real, a memory, pictures In an album to recall.

The things’ we’ve lost and discovered In yesterday remain with us,

Wanting Is a feeling, an emotion of this our human nature.

What do we have today that we did not have yesterday,

A little more and a little less fore to figure out, don’t know why.

A waste of time trying to understand what’s been taken from a hand,

Nothing to be gained, only loss, precious time lost In thought.

So to the future, we walk with arms’ opened wide, what’s In sight,

To yesterday a goodbye as we no longer try changing the story.

Trying to figure out yesterday when life leads us the rest of the way.

Keith Garrett

EIGHTEEN WHEELS

Leaving out of North Dakota, heading for Odessa Town,

Hopped up into my ole’ truck, eighteen wheels under my butt.

Haulin’ a load of lumber and steel,

Me and my music box, my hands on the steering wheel.

I’m headin’ for the heat of Texas,

It’s gonna be a long, long, road, don’t you know.

I turned up some good ole’ country tunes,

Time to put the hammer down.

This life I chose, on the road it’s to anywhere I roam,

Just a simple Kansas farm boy, one day I’ll go back home.

Eighteen wheels, rollin’ down the highway,

Eighteen wheels, doin’ it my way.

Just a good ole’ boy with places to be,

A country heart and I got things to see,

Eighteen Wheels and I’m runnin’ free.

Keith Garrett

OVER THE HILL TO A DIFFERENT WORLD

From yesterday is where I come from, my life is with a wife and child,

Seeking a new life and possibly a different place of settling down.

We are pioneers of the early nineteenth century traveling across

The hot desert where there is much hardship, sickness, and hunger,

There’s a chance I must take as my son is very sick with fever this day.

I say goodbye to all in our wagon train for now as I say perhaps there

Over the hill, I will find help, faith walks with me as I begin my quest,

Over the hill to a different world as I pass over the top of the ridge.

Am I dreaming as these impossible things appear before my tired eyes,

The wagon train is gone, vanished into the air, this can not be.

I see traveling machines, music, and that which can not possibly exist

People so different, I’m looked at so strangely as I tell of my plight.

My son is sick I say, he’s over that hill, a kind woman she was,

A bottle, something inside, these will make him better I’m told.

I must go now, I run for the hill, I climb as this world is not mine,

At the top I now see again my world and wagon train, I look back,

The world I walked into is now gone, only desert I left behind, my son does not die.

Keith Garrett

NATURAL WONDERS

Way up high upon the mountain I stand watching,

In many directions, I can see, since all things created.

This and all mountains of the world are an amazing sight,

A story for each one, many pages written since the beginning.

See far I do across the world at the oceans, the seven seas of beauty,

A mystery below the waters, so many discoveries yet to come.

From here the deserts are a wonderful sight, from here day and night,

The wonders that live together understand each other throughout time.

The sky and all that is far beyond is seen and dreamed from where I am,

Natural wonders have been thought of and created by a being most powerful.

Keith Garrett

THOUGHTS OF THE PAST

I think of being a child so long ago in the snow,

My family was much younger in those days of course.

A father young with energy, a mother full of life and friends,

When Batman and the Munsters were a favorite show of my day.

Coloring books from the past, Milton the monster show and more,

Bozo the clown or the Billy Barty show, Massachusetts long ago.

From the East to the West, life would change in a big, big, way,

What a different place, to this day I miss where I use to play.

Memories from Elementary school, games played, friends of the time,

From where I started to where I now stand, so much in between.

Change never goes away, faces fade and nothing remains the same,

Thoughts of the past keep me company, are they the only things that last.

Keith Garrett

“SENSES”

Within us, there are things that make us feel and communicate,

They are sensitive but powerful to the human function.

Necessary are these but not threatening to the survival of ones being,

They give us the ability to seek out and experience the wonders of the world.

The sense of smell gives us the ability to distinguish between fragrances,

To like or dislike what is in the air.

To see is to have the chance of being able to personally witness in color,

Or black and white pictures of the world remembered by your own mind.

Amazing is to hear fore it is the sense of many musical sounds,

To the ears the knowledge of whom or what is near you.

Now the sense of taste is a great and remarkable experience for all,

Eating foods and enjoying drinks, the word flavor means what to your mouth.

Touch or feel can be an incredible and exciting pleasure to enjoy,

It is the sense that man and woman may share together.

Keith Garrett

NO ROOM TO MOVE

Will it come to be, more cars, people multiply so fast,

Take away the land and raise the buildings high, so high.

Crowded streets, bodies standing feet to feet,

Standing in line all the time, the lines get longer, wasted time.

The freeways are slow moving, one day will they just freeze,

No room to move, no space to breathe, sardines in a can are we.

Houses today rowed up like dominoes, to close for peace,

Along the sidewalks nothing but cars and debris that I see.

The sky is crowded, noise and traffic of its own, progress is said,

Ships throughout our oceans, no room to move, no room to move.

Keith Garrett

HILLS’ OF FIRE
Keith Garrett

Look to the sky, watch as the smoke rises high above,

Beauty disappears as the heat consumes what was green.

Ignorance or wind destroys god’s masterpiece created,

A fool is a man who can’t see the gift put in front of him.

See the hills of fire, watch as the animals run, see their fear,

See all that can be seen through eyes of pain, of sorrow.

Hills of fire burn no more, fire of death be rained down upon,

Let life reappear, let the colors so bright be a sight.

Hills of fire and death, open your eyes, do you see,

Hills of pain, hills of sorrow, open your eyes, do you see.

Hills of beauty and laughter, open your eyes, do you see,

Hills of breath, hills of darkness, open your eyes, do you see.

Hills of danger and mistrust, open your eyes, do you see,

The glow in the sky, a scar for all to see.

Hills of eternity and life, open your eyes, do you see,

Hills of slumber, hills of strength, open your eyes, do you.

Take these hills of fire away, never again, there’s a price you pay.

THINKING OF MAN

Wow!, think about it, everyone has changed just as the times have changed,

Way back in time when food had to be hunted for daily, appreciation for a bite.

Today fast food on every corner that is slowly killing all around the world,

When we don’t finish our plates then we simply toss it away, down the drain.

There was a time when a man could drink from a lake or stream, refreshing,

Today without an intelligent thought it is perhaps for a dollar polluted water.

Way back in the west, many places, in fact, a body could rest their weary head

Under a tree, make camp and sleep, hunt, have some peace without a stare,

We come to the future where a person is now labeled homeless, we stare.

Loitering and vagrancy are the words used, no sleeping, hard to survive,

Move along it will be said to the one who dares to be free and live in peace.

It’s come to where neighbors fighting and the sounds of sirens are the way,

Nature is screamed at, a burden to many as they make their beautiful sounds in the day.

Trash in the streets but that’s okay, another will clean it if they come this way,

Thinking of man, this way of the future, we now pay a price for water, air, and even dirt.

Keith Garrett

IN HIS ROCKING CHAIR

He sees the day, on his porch the world is his scenery,

The shows are always different, nothing stays the same.

Every day he rests his weary soul in his special place,

A lifetime of family and friends but slowly they vanish.

If you pass him by then not a care might you have,

He’s not just an old man, a mother’s son, once a young man.

In his rocking chair, he can go back in time, yesterday in his mind,

He watches the boy running with his friends, an old man at day’s end.

He has had quite a life as the value of his being does not fade with the days,

His time here has aged him just as it does every mortal being.

Don’t be fooled while this man with a name sits in his rocking chair,

He has much to say from a mouth, eyes that have watched many seasons,

In his rocking chair he sits taking in the day, he sees the sun going down.

Keith Garrett