Current poems in progress...

Remembering Opto
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
his passion
blanketed the pages
Haikuland

TODAY he sleeps with Angels.
It is with profound sorrow, sadness and Eternal Joy for OPTO, who wrote here for several years and made many friends, that I inform you of his death this early monring. Michael (OPTO) went peacefully in his sleep after his 17 month long battle with stage 4 Metastatic gastric cancer. Please keep Michael’s family and friends in your thoughts and prayers.
JOURNEYS END by mgm
posted sept 7th 2008
One more hour, one hour till flight.
Till the journey begins
The end is in sight.
It’s been a long wait but I feel good inside
For I tied up loose ends made everything right.
Looking back on my life, it was uphill and down
And many a time I fell flat on the ground.
I made some mistakes, and enemies, a few
They all forgave me, I hope he will too.
I’ve been a good father; I’ve been a good son
I’ve been a good brother, and my wife’s number one.
I wish I weren’t leaving, I wish I could stay
But with dying you see the sign says one way.
Mgm (OPTO aka MGM) Sept. 2008
Remember me with smiles and laughter, for that is how I'll remember you all. If you can only remember me with tears, then don't remember me at all"...From Little House on the Prairie

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FLY HIGH AND SOAR FREE, OPTO! your friend, ~Q~

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Opto_ Q sent me a note telling of your passing. May you have many days of future that will give you many tomorrows.--GrandmaBea
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concision, grace:
ku's just practice for the
tongue of angels
.
--eritain
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Hello, This is Michael's aka (OPTO or mgm) wife.
Thank you for posting this from his caring bridge site. I am glad that his poetry friends were able to be informed of his passing. If you would like more information please visit his caringbridge site... www.caringbridge.com michaelmathews
God speed to all of you.
Mary Ellen (memac)
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or... please feek free to email me at
mmathews@hillsbobroschools.net
I have been scouring the net looking for this site. I knew HE(mgm, opto, Mike) had a troubled past and used poetry to help express himelf. He told me he had a place online to voice his hurt. I can only say that the poetry he gave to me was pricelessly beautiful and full of compassion and love. I feel you all had a part in his healing while he waited for me to appear. We only married for 6 years, but his poetry was a thing of beauty.
Anyway, thanks to all of you for "saving" him and encouraging him until I came along.
posted: 4-8-09
Mary Ellen (memac)
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oh geez, i wish I could type.. mmathews@hillsboroschools.net memac

sitting on the fence
brings a familiar feeling --
a pain in the butt

I like that humor!...WR
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Thanks! Have we met here before? --eritain
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I think so. I have had a number of Haikus on here. Sometimes I post as WR and sometimes as BR. I love Haikus, don't you? ...WR
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I do. Of all the arts in this world ... well, I might never live in a house with a Picasso or an Ansel Adams. I have Bach and Bill Evans only so long as I have electricity, for I have neither the training nor the long fingers to play them myself. I will probably never be able to regularly attend world-class dance performances. But every place I even visit is decorated with an Emily Dickinson or a Wilfred Owen, a Shakespeare or an Auden, an Isaac Watts or a William Carlos Williams or one of the many fine, quiet, eminently memorizable ku I've read here. Strip me naked and maroon me on a tiny Pacific atoll, I still have a collection of world-class art. We lovers of words are the luckiest.
If I may ask, why the double nicknames? --eritain
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I don't know when you posted the above, ertain, I don't come on here too often. The double nicknames...I started posting as BR for my name Bill Roberts. Then, someone else started posting using the same initials and posting things I didn't want to be credited with. So, I changed over to WR. Now, few people are posting on this site, so, I think I'll go back to BR.
...BR

criminal
broke and entered my
tender heart

Sweet and sad. ....WR

Bleak winter morning
Color lost in maze of gray
Oh! A cardinal!
-----
beekay

Beautiful! The contrast of the maze of gray with the cadinal just makes the color stand out in my mind.
...WR
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Exquisite. I love it.

a song
a birdsong
a beach

There on the sidewalk --
raindrops on a golden leaf;
the print of my shoe.

a southwestern sky
hardly seems like a minute
the tear in my eye

A Felicitous
Facility Of Words Is
Orbiting Pluto