​POETRY            

Calm Pacific, bluer sky fill the restaurant windows.   
                                              Photo by Weebly.com                                                      

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3 Poems:  
An Old Friend, 
Rhapsody in the Park, and
A Night Soccer Game
by Dennis Sides

               An Old Friend

​Calm Pacific, bluer sky fill the restaurant windows.
He’s still the man I once knew, despite the all-white hair
and the barrel chest that’s retreated south. His eyes graze
over the menu, asking about the fish. It’s been 15 years.
He’s married now—a missed turn, a different restaurant,
getting seated next to a woman who would become his wife.
An amused half-smile flashes as he reaches back through the years
and I see how the woman, or the years, have softened his rough edges.
We swap stories, talk of others—two more now gone—and I sense
the weight of time and truth: the days are long, but the years are short.
After the laughter and the news and the history we get to the now.
A medical procedure left a shadow on his heart, made him slow.
This man who’s run 65 marathons, including Boston, shakes his head.
Takes him half an hour to walk a mile, feels like he’s straining to hear
some ironic joke, told over and over, but can’t catch the punch line.
 
We’d once been close, but a bad split set us out on separate roads.
Yet today we talk and laugh easily, the incident not mentioned at all.
In the rear-view telescope of time, those things look awfully small.
I’m lifted by the wings of friendship and this reconnection to the past.
In our mad dash through life, perhaps we only truly measure ourselves
in the company of old friends, if we’re lucky enough to find them.

          Rhapsody in the Park

​(Inspiration: “Rhapsody in Blue” performance by S.F. Symphony, Yerba Buena Gardens.)

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Under blue skies on a city green we claim space on the grass.
Lunchtime crowd filters in, filling the park, applause rising.
We’re here to hear the Symphony, as music and spring fill the air.
Finally, those famous opening notes of the bass clarinet hushing
the crowd, glissandos glittering, shimmering in the sunlight,
setting the tall stands of skyscrapers swaying in the breeze.
My heart starts dancing to architecture as the lush sound
saturates the very air I breathe in with body, mind, and spirit.
I’m carried aloft through the French horns, then the piano,
and lifted free at last by the power of the entire ensemble.
I’m enthralled and enraptured inside this musical kaleidoscope,
this madcap marriage of classical and jazz, metropolitan majesty,
all so wild and wondrous; I am free, untethered from gravity,
unfettered from restraint, as melodies and masterpiece charge the air.
When the violins sweep in I’m in free fall, tearing up, flooded
with grace, as sound and light breeze through my body like air.
Gershwin in command now as the train makes its triumphant return,
steaming into the station. Lady Jazz, sporting a new dress, descends
onto the platform, smiling—at last made an “honest woman.”
But we knew that all along.  

                 A Night Soccer Game

​      Upon the fields of friendly strife are sown the seeds that
      in other years, on other fields, will bear the fruits of victory.
      - Douglas MacArthur, as displayed on a high school banner

​The first rain of winter gurgles in the gutters,
flutters down in furls illuminated by the tall bright lights.
I stand at the field’s edge, huddled under my umbrella.
Men shout as the ball is kicked and they race downfield,
throwing their bodies imperiously against cold and wet.
They celebrate their strong legs running with abandon,
spending their youth gladly, gallantly reckless in the night,
safe in the sweetness of self that their bodies can be trusted.
I feel the pounding feet, see the brief clouds of expelled air
as they thunder past, the ball bouncing out of bounds to me.
I underhand the ball back to a tall man who waves thanks.
 
I can’t help but imagine, many long years from now, this man
coming upon another soccer game, and watching, like me,
flashing back to recall those earlier games and glories.
Maybe for a moment he feels the old stirrings in his legs,
senses the excitement of young blood singing in his veins,
is warmed by the glow of competition and comradeship.
He may be shocked, then, to realize he’s old now, like me,
and wonder where his life went, just a few short memories ago.
 
But then, a flash—I’m back in my high school gym, gazing up
at the banner with that quote I’d never quite understood before . . .
I nod to the memory and, still smiling, I turn and walk away.

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​​Dennis Sides has been a software developer, book editor, professional musician, construction project manager, tech writer, and world traveler. He's hung up his traveling shoes during covid, but hopes to get back out on the road soon. He's lived in the Fillmore long enough to qualify for "San Francisco native" status.

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