Linda Stitt:
two poems for Norm Hacking:
"For Norm" and "Legacy"

For Norm

Sometimes,
when I am warped
with cold and callousness,
when winter's cruel and icy winds
deform me
and I am twisted by indifference,
you wrap me in your heart
and warm me.

Sometimes my spirit,
fragmented by pain,
regards itself
too shattered and too tattered
ever to be whole,
and then you come
and glean me with a poem
and bring me to the tears
that heal my soul.

Sometimes,
I fear I have forgotten love,
have come so far
and grown so old
that it will never find me,
and, with a song,
you lead me back to my essential self
and you remind me.

Always,
when I am foundering
upon the suffering I feel around me,
the loneliness and sorrow I am seeing,
you turn me to the truth
beyond despair
by showing me the beauty of your being.

Legacy

Let's have no tears in his epitaph,
they'd go against the grain.
Let's fire up a joint in his memory
and smoke away some of the pain.

We're all one at heart where he touched us,
in that place where his music abides,
so pass round the wine
and we'll drink to his journey
and sing till the sorrow subsides.

Let's remember the love he evoked in us all,
the gift he so freely gave us.
This world is a hard, lonely place,
as he knew,
and there's nothing but love to save us

© Linda Stitt 2007