Tony Healey

I'm a firm believer that every girl needs a brother, even if he isn't related by blood. Thanks to the Kindle All-Stars, I have about ten. Tony is the one who teases me the most. And I'm okay with that. As I write this, Tony and I have recently finished one project; we're working on a second; and a third is already on the horizon. I may complain a bit about "my writers," but the truth is I wouldn't change any of them.

I'm sharing this with you so maybe you'll better understand why this particular poem, and the email to which it was attached, hit me hard.

Laurie, 

Find pasted into the body of this email my second poem. I wrote this for my brother Danny, who passed away nearly 25 years ago now.

WISH YOU WERE HERE

The Honeycroft Series is available on Amazon

Decades drifting downstream,

But no more than a day,

Since you were taken away

Old scars pull at the seams

Every time you rise within my thoughts,

My heart aches,

I wish you were here with me, with us, around

To see how we’d have loved you

But the tide took you; caught

I need you, I want to see you,

Just one last time, hold you,

Against my breast to hear

My heart-song,

I want you near

A higher power,

Says its right to take you from us,

Brother, and the Brother next door,

But regardless I’m still wishing

I have lived a lifetime of conversations unspoken,

Empty, hollow sadness rolling down cheeks,

A pain in the walls of my heart,

Anniversaries of yesterday and what was

And what might have been

If only I could forget about you,

Let the river take you,

Carry you far away to the valley before the dawn,

To eternal night

And are you there,

Somewhere,

Beneath the great wheel,

The big dipper, the belt of Orion?

Looking where I’m looking?

Feeling what I’m feeling, perhaps,

And knowing how I wish you were here?

Haunted ‘till the very end,

When we will meet again.

Tony Healey is the author of The Honeycroft Series, The Stars My Redemption, and others including a collection called Double. By the way, he also designs all his own covers and he's done a few for other KAS authors as well. (As we speak, he's tweaking a design I came up with for one of mine.)

Visit Tony's website:  www.fringescientist.com

Tony Healey

Tony Healey's contribution to the Kindle All-Stars goes beyond his story, "Redd." At one point, when I was having Internet connectivity issues, and couldn't get certain things done for the cause, Tony picked up the slack and made things happen.

When I lost my Internet connection completely due to the uselessness of my ISP, Tony kept our fearless leader, Bernard Schaffer, from putting out an APB on me. I'm only joking a little, at the time Bernard was a police detective who had seen enough in the line of duty to be worried sick about me during those three blackout days.

CHERRY TREE 

Burial is now available on Amazon (edited by yours truly)

Wind blows
Blossoms fall
A thousand delicate
White memories
That will never grow back 

Time is a dry sun
And memory is perishable
Destined to decay
Washed away by a
Winter shower 

Years gone by and
Only a handful left
Hanging half-remembered
From gnarled limbs
Snowdrops 

The forgotten dreams of
A young man
Of former glory
Spilt upon the ground
The lost promise of fruit 

When the last blossom has fallen
The tree, bare and old stands revealed
All memory has faded
Like distant moonlight
Time stands still
Ceases to be a hard road
Upon which the past has died 

The road leads toward
Tomorrow
And the silky white prospect
Of a thousand pale
Blossoms
Falling 

Adrift forever

Tony Healey is the author of The Honeycroft Series, The Stars My Redemption, and others including a collection called Double.


A bit about "Burial":
Fred Aniello committed the perfect murder... but just when he thought he'd gotten away with it, his new life was turned upside down. Because sometimes a killer's secrets won't stay buried...


Visit Tony's website:  www.fringescientist.com