Stuff about an old friend, preceded by a new poem

Timeless Surf

Time it does
Stop for Me
Whenever I
Lie by the sea.

Breaking surf
A thing sublime
Gives no reason to
The thing called time.

One wave it does
Not lend itself to
Beat or rhythm
Nor anything new.

Ancient beat
Too complicated
To the simplicity of digital
or analog, we are jaded.

What better way though
to spend your time?
God put it to work
To give us rhyme.

Ken Goree


I figured I needed one about the sea to go with the bit of Doug Varga’s poem. If by any stretch of the imagination, he or his parents (you know how parents save our school work) have the original poem intact, I would love to see it, or hear it again to see if my fevered imagination has remembered the first two stanzas anywhere close to the original version.

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I'm old, reeeeeealllyy old, but I still think back to a magnificent work of poetic genius, written by a childhood friend of mine, Doug Varga. It was our sixth grade year at Sunset
Elementary school in the Issaquah School District. We were studying, and had to do a report on, Explorers, or maybe just Columbus more likely (Remember when we all thought Columbus was a good guy?).

In Doug's genius, he created a poem that, I'm sure got him an "A" but reduced his word count on the report considerably at the same time. As a bonus, the poem required almost no factual material, thus limiting the amount of studying to approximately ... ummm ... nothing. And, he got laughed "with," not "at" by his whole class. I forget whether the teacher was laughing or not. I wonder if Doug even remembers it?

I can even remember some of the poem Doug wrote ...

Keep in mind as you read this, Doug was kind of a Monty Python, Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy sort of guy.

By Doug Varga, my childhood friend, and I'm sure still a really good guy.

Unknown title, probably something about Columbus or Other Random Great Explorer

While sailing this square cube
And what I might encounter
On the eighteenth day
I spied a giant flounder.

I whipped out my black Zebco
And casted without fear
Instead of catching the fish
I caught the captain's ear.

Sorry to leave you hanging, but I don't remember any more of it, though I am certain there was something about walking the plank and a last minute reprieve as the guy with the Zebco is the first to see "The New World."

Another day, I may tell the story about the time Greg Grimes was practicing his golf swing and Doug's head got in the way of Greg's #2 wood. Doug was less than impressed.