SPRING OF 1887

The weather was now warmer, beautiful were the days,

Times were changing, it was the Spring of 1887.

A father and my family would have to move away,

Hard times, I could see the tears form in his tired eyes.

A new family bought our farm, this place where I grew,

Memories for me as I passed it by each day.

My husband’s niece would come to live and stay,

A young girl’s father who would soon pass away

There was much happiness mixed with the struggles of life,

A town in the Spring of 1887 is where I could be found.

Times were changing but much life was still ahead,

Times with family and friends, written words, and books to come.

Keith Garrett

FROM HERE TOO THERE

I stroll back down the road of time, too a place where the years hide,

I am a searcher of lost things, they exist only in memory, in a dream.

Back there was left a piece of my heart, take my hand, help me find,

Show me a way too close the door, move forward into my life.

I saw you all in sleepless night dreams, you did not age, not for me,

I see your faces on a magical screen, still the same pictures from my mind.

From here too there, I’ve traveled back to the past, I see this today,

Where did you go, young lady, as I wandered my world, disappeared.

Your words are heard, no voice, written to read, thoughts for my day,

From then too now is where it is I stand, from here too there, take my hand.

Keith Garrett

ON A SHIP TO MANY LANDS

Let’s us take a trip together, we have the time, let’s sail,

We’ll pack our things, board that ship bound for exciting lands.

Around the world we go, traveling across the waters on a ship,

Where we are heading will be to places never seen by our eyes.

Around the world, Australia, Ireland, Greenland, what a world,

Alaska, Switzerland, Hungary, we’ll see it all, we may never go home.

Germany, Italy, France, there’s so much beauty from Gods created thoughts,

Scotland, England, on a ship to many lands, across the oceans, on a ship we stand.

We’ll have sailed the seven seas and seen the moon and stars hand in hand.

Keith Garrett

FEET IN THE CREEK

Beneath the trees that touch the sky,

Down where their leaves fall to the ground.

Across a meadow, beyond the grass so tall,

A creek with flowing water, I travel under the sun.

What a treat, my shoes are off, my feet in the creek,

Under these trees that have stood here for some time,

Beneath the blue and clouded sky, water touches my feet

Feet in the creek, a cool, flowing breeze, just these things and me.

Keith Garrett

CATCH A DREAM

We chase, search out and run as fast as we can,

While we sleep the greatest things can happen,

Run do we very fast, jump so very high to touch the sky,

Jump on the rooftop, flips in the air, slow motion if you please.

Always for me money floating down a stream, a pile in the street,

Just as it is grabbed by my hand disappears does it as I become awake.

We all have been there when a monster chases us and then we are elsewhere,

Dreams are always so mixed up, at times tiring as we are in places of mystery.

Floating in the air, suddenly in a bubble, we drift onward to where nothing makes sense,

Catch a dream, hold on tight and bring it back home with you tonight, any night.

Catch a dream, dream, to be all that you hope to be, dream the perfect scene.

Keith Garrett

PAPER AIRPLANES

Watch them fly, as a child, magic in flight,

Different sizes, many paper shapes.

When just a boy, when magic seemed so real,

In my desk, there were stacks of paper airplanes,

Colored and ready for takeoff, imagination of a child.

They soared in the sky on a breezy, sun filled day,

I remember those times when I would run and play.

Upon a hill, standing there looking down,

My airplanes of paper ready to sail up high.

Paper airplanes in my time of youth,

I can almost feel it again, I can see it now.

Keith Garrett

MY NAME WAS TOM

A lifetime ago, many years in the past,
My name was Tom, I lived on a farm in the South.
A wife named Elizabeth, a fine woman,
Two daughters, Emily and Marie, indeed.
During the Civil War, I took my place alongside many men,
Did not think I would return home, seeing so many die.
Wounded everywhere, families destroyed,
The war ended, I returned to be with my family.
We decide to head West, buy a farm,
Settled down to a new world, many years ago.
Friends I had are no more, I once had a farm,
Nothing is forever as Emily and Marie had grown.
Daughters once loved by me married and had children of their own,
My wife got older as did I, back in a time.
One day sickness took hold of my life,
I did die once upon a time.
My wife Elizabeth was now much alone,
Working the farm I once owned.
Not so many years had passed, memories are in the past,
Elizabeth, my once fine wife, it was now her time to die, too again be mine.
Life’s clock keeps ticking, things change, disappear,
Emily and Marie, those daughters of mine,
They had wonderful lives, they had their days to see heaven in the sky.
My name was Tom, I had a life,
A fine wife and two loving daughters by the names of Emily and Marie,
My name was Tom, now we are all gone.

Keith Garrett

LET ME LIVE!

Listen to the drummers beat, bang the drums slowly,

Steal it does something each day from deep inside.

The mind is a powerful machine of its own,

It tears at my body as it haunts my soul.

There’s a force, an invisible monster that seeks me,

The toll it takes on my every day can only be imagined if not experienced.

A spirit weakened as the fight lingers on to survive,

Let me live!, I want to stay alive.

My place of thought will only take so much in before

It can handle no other struggles,

Shut down it will and cease to see a world.

Let me live! as I am not asking,

My statement has been made,

I know who you are, they call you panic!.

Keith Garrett

LEGENDS OF THE OLD WEST

They came from a time chosen for them,

Became that which they were from many circumstances.

Right or wrong, bad or good, these are the legends of the old west,

The men and women who survived as they did.

From Wyatt Earp to the Dalton gang, these names,

Doc Holliday and Calamity Jane once walked.

Bat Mastersen, Buffalo Bill Cody, and Wild Bill Hicock,

Men of the old west, a different time and place.

Annie Oakley, or General George Custer, another two,

Frank and Jesse James robbing banks and trains.

Billy the Kid at a young age killed a few,

Pat Garrett the sheriff shot him down.

From the Alamo they fought and died, back in time,

Jim Bowie did fight, Davey Crockett no longer alive.

Sitting bull and Geronimo, Cochise, Indians of stories,

Were a different breed, lived and died as they believed,

Legends of the old west, stories in time.

Keith Garrett

INDIAN BRAVE

From ancestors, traditions handed down,

Taught by a father, lessons from a chief.

Their way was not the white mans’ way,

Born on the land, that which was precious.

That which was sacred, heart of the Indian,

Fought for that which was believed in.

They hunted for food, they did not waste,

Used the land to survive all the days.

An Indian brave, a warrior man,

Afraid not of death, fore another life they will have.

Keith Garrett