A trial run of sorts. I still do not know how this device works really. So, I shall just jump in or dive head first. I did that once at our cousin’s summer cottage at Lake Erie, I.e., dove in off a very long pier. Fortunately I did a shallow dive and only scraped my chest; otherwise, I would probably have broken my neck and not be here to record the latest musings of my feeble, electric muse.
Reading The Phone Poem:
Best to read them one at a time:
They’re short and fairly graphic;
But if it’s morals you’re about,
No fear—non pornographic!
Stop for an appropriate giggle; I always do. Now for the more substantial in this time of pandemic.
The Fall of Man
Walking down our steep driveway,
I stumbled, nearly fell;
With bamboo cane I caught myself:
Old age is sometimes Hell!
I should entitle it, The Fall of this Man, perhaps. Or, Down and Out, whatever. Probably needless to say, the phone poem is essentially autobiographical. Wisdom continues in a like vein:
Wisdom, The Continuation
Old age is sometimes Hell, I think,
But not today, I swear;
For overhead, intense blue sky
That all thought could repair!
Just a touch of Renaissance language and thought there, and a phone poem that delights me. Really delights me. My muse was working overtime, perhaps, as it is in the next one.
Self Reflection
I am the Koi contained within
Her deep but narrow pond;
Down and back and forth each day,
Hoping for some beyond.
Christ!
Hoping for some beyond, each day,
Concerning my life and times;
I try to read the signs before,
Beside, and, yes, behind;
But nothing points beyond myself,
Nothing but Christ Divine.
Okay, and the intense blue sky. But the narrator of that last phone poem doesn’t know that. The end reminds me of a fine line in a short Eliot poem, where the young woman asks her would-be seducer, “Are we then so serious?” The title of the poem, I think, is “Conversation Gallant.” It’s delightful. It reminds me of my friend Carl in that the narrator of the poem, the would-be seducer, keeps trying to deny that love is real; but the woman forces him to a point of real commitment.
