Songs for a Granddaughter: Poems by Jeff Kemper

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Nine: A Song for a Granddaughter

for a girl, M___, raised in my household, though
not a blood relative

1

She is the girl who cheers my heart:
“Come, Jeff. Let’s play!” she voices smart
And innocent as we depart.

We go outside beneath the azure skies—
She advocates I get my exercise.
She scoots her scooter up and down the streets
Or skates her skates on parking-lot retreats
With me in tow. She executes her feats
And I adjure she is a grand success
As we in festive frolic coalesce.

But then, alas, the skies turned red.
“Let’s go inside and play,” she said.
But then she sorts crayons instead.

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2

As time refuses to recline,
Maturing with the Grand Design,
This little girl-child now is nine!

The skates and scooter hibernate in peace
While on her bike she ventures with caprice
To novel places hither, thither, yon;
Returns and drops her bike upon the lawn;
And on to other ventures, sometimes gone
And sometimes here. She leads a football cheer
Or paints a canvas clever and sincere.

When she grows up with more esprit
And new pursuits, to what degree,
I muse, will she remember me?

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October 2015

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Seventeen: A Song for a Granddaughter

for M___

1

O whither goes my tortured child,
Once joyful, now tormented wild,
As though from humankind exiled?

Removed from friends and family, in gloom
She sits alone within a haunted room,
Locked in a labyrinth of toxic dreams
With ghosts and ghouls attacking from regimes
Below, ransacking in their devilish schemes.
The shard of hope wishes to exorcise
The imps of diabolical demise.

Has she grown up so quickly now
To dark domains that disallow
A God within her I-and-Thou?

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2

She is the girl who rends my heart:
In silence we are worlds apart;
And now she bids her life depart.

She goes outside beneath foreboding skies
And walks alone or runs for exercise
To shed what little weight her body bears.
She eats but nothing to allay her cares
That corpulence may conquer unawares.
If I adjure she is a grand success
The adulation she will then suppress.

She sees the sky as always gray;
She lives inside her mind each day
And sorts her plans to waste away.

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July 2023

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Jeff Kemper has been a biology teacher, biblical studies instructor, editor, and painting contractor. He lives in York County, Pennsylvania.