A great man has passed away. I met Joel Fallon when I burst onto the Benicia poetry scene in 2012. Some of the poets didn’t embrace my simple rhymes at first, but Joel would read my work in the Benicia Herald and write letters to the editor saying how much he enjoyed them. Now in these parts, that was a huge endorsement, what with Joel being the first poet Laureate of Benicia and all. He once saw me at the library working on my novel, “The Field”. He read what was done and gave me encouragement. Support. That’s what friends do.
He was a short man with a resounding presence. He would fill up a room with his deep baritone as he powerfully projected his poetry into the hearts and minds of its occupants. He wrote of simple moments and feelings that might otherwise go unnoticed. He was our conscience. He read a piece once that I listened to and was so inspired to do a companion piece and dedicate it to him in the paper. It was about old sepia pictures and the unsmiling faces of people from bygone eras. How we look and wonder how their days were. How they loved. How they lived. How were they different. How they were the same.
Once again I dedicate this piece to my friend and mentor; Joel Fallon. Rest in Peace my friend; Godspeed.
JPB

Pictures of People

Pictures of people I’ve loved and I’ve known
Lie asleep in a box in a closet alone
I stumble across them, once in a great while
And I open the box and I pull out the pile
The light reawakens the sparks that they were
And rekindle emotions that used to occur
I can almost remember those lives left behind
For a diff-er-ent destiny I hoped to find
All the forks in the road that I didn’t walk down
Might have showed me a fate that was best left unfound
All these pictures of people continue to fade
They’re the ghosts and the shadows of choices I made

Jeff Burkhart’s “Rhyme and Reason”
©Copyright, November, 2015
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