Introspective Verses

In the past I compiled two books of poetry, one commercially published and the other self-published in a very basic form for family and friends. The former is Walking Down My Shadows which is available from Eternal Press, now a subsidiary of Damnation Books.(No comment on the firm's name, please. I had nothing to do with it and do not either praise or condemn.) The other was Mother-Daughter Lines and included poems my mother had written which I found while going through her personal papers and souvenirs after her passing. There were some odd parallels in our writing such as the fact we both wrote our first simple verses at the age of eight! We also addressed similar topics at parallel stages or our growth and maturing. It was rather interesting and also odd so I put them in a book.

However I find there is a good bit of my work that didn't make it into either book. I'm collecting and reworking the earlier collections now. Some I have written since or found after the books were completed and others were left out to keep them from being even more top-heavy than they were!  I am such a wordy and prolific writer, often to my sheer chagrin! Much of it should be ruthlessly consigned to the flames but I cannot quite bring myself to do it. I'll leave that to my beleaguered heirs who will have to deal with my dubious legacy! I smirk a little, paraphrasing the little mot: I smile because you're my kids and laugh because there is not one thing you can do about it!

Anyway I came across a few verses recently that perhaps offer a streaked window into who and what I am and for what it's worth, I will share them here. Raspberries, boos and hisses or mild kudos are all acceptable as comments LOL. Poetry is a very personal and individual thing; these words won't say to most readers what I actually felt nor will any two read them exactly the same, I am sure. That is okay. Art of all kinds is subjective and everyone puts his or her unique perspective into viewing any work of art.

What, no pictures? Sorry, maybe tomorrow!

Two Verses, Dec 2011 (composed shortly after I moved into my current home)

            A Last Home

Coming home to a new place

That never has felt strange.

Hills and heat and dusty dry

Are all my heart’s home range.

Settling down in this new place

That’s never felt unknown;

Desert mountains edge the space

Like every home I’ve known.

I plant roses, dig my dirt

To stake my heart-home claim.

Feel a sense of deja-vu

As if it knew my name.

Maybe it’s the final home

That this life has for me.

If so I think I am content

And I will let it be.

            Relics and Ruins

Sifting through the ruins now—

Shards of dreams and long gone days--

I shake my head and wonder

At the tangle of life’s ways.

Souvenirs I chose to keep

And those I cast away

Strike me now both wise and strange

As I look on them today.

The one I used to be still lurks 

In who I have become;

Loves and dreams and plans built

This self, all I grew from.

The product of a rocky path—

Scars, obvious and unseen

Strength and courage to go on

To a future that seemed mean.

Yet it is good to be here now

Where I was meant to be;

The journey near an end somehow,

And the time for flying free.

And one written early this year: 

Turn Another Page...

Time to turn another page

As once again life changes.

We live, we grow, we learn, we age

As destiny rearranges

The pattern of our days.

We start in new directions.

Follow down new winding ways

And seek new intersections.

We shut the door behind

Though sometimes memories follow

To which we can’t be blind

However hard to swallow

Are those remnants of the past

Be they pleasant, raw or tragic

They are with us to the last

And by time’s fateful magic

They weave through the design

That makes us who we are

As pressure and heat refine

From dross the golden star.

Would we still be the same

If somehow we had missed

Each stumble, strike and blame

That comes as we exist?

We thrive on complication,

Threats, challenges and such.

Cloying sweet stagnation

Would smother us so much!

If life were bland and tame

And our strength never tested—

What purpose to a game

With no records to be bested?