Richard, know that you were loved and will remain in our hearts forever...This memorial website was created by Canadian Academy's Class of '99 to remember our dearest friend, Richard, who passed away on September 26, 2007 at the age of 26. You will live forever in our hearts and memories.
Please kindly share your memories, condolenses and photos of Richard under Memories so that his friends and family across the world can truly appreciate how many lives Richard has touched.
“Spare Change”*
By Richard Tsai
A pale teenage girl,
Cold on the street,
Begs for money to eat,
A business woman
Stops to scold her,
Urging her to make ends meet.
An old blind man
Plays the accordion
In a subway car,
A Midwestern tourist
Watches with awe
But he is the only one.
A frail young woman
Plays the violin
In a dirty subway station,
A Jamaican couple
Begs for fifty cents
To buy tickets for the train.
A shy young man
Reaches in his pocket
He can feel their pain,
But something stops him;
He keeps his fifty cents
With no need for spare change.
* The poem won the Editor’s Choice Award presented by poetry.com and International Library of Poetry in Jan 2006. It was also selected as a semi-finalist in the International Open Poetry Contest in Dec 2005.
Into Hereafter
By Richard Tsai
Like fire and ice into a mild haunting,
A casket closes on the face of youth,
Torment and despair grip the voices,
With buried faces they beg for truth,
A silent wind may move and whisper
Unheard tales of happiness,
They try to recall their joyful past
But are slow’d by clouds of mist,
Porcelain hope and shattered dreams,
Dissipate into the air,
Pieces that cannot be assembled
Are put aside with care,
To rise from the heavy fog
While falling ever faster,
And embrace the upward journey
Into hereafter,
*Accepted for publication in The Best Poems and Poets of 2004.
