This post was written after the weekend at Festival on the Square.
After a weekend of promoting Writers Circle, NCWN West and Echoes Across the Blue Ridge, I dragged myself home, took a shower and a nap. Hot weather saps my energy and yesterday was hot and humid, but we had a successful event.
In one of the anthologies on our table was my story, An Angel Named Amos. The theme is horses. That book was popular. So was the anthology, Echoes Across the Blue Ridge.
Poetry was not popular with people at this festival. Does that mean that we didn't have a literary crowd? Or is it true that only poets buy poetry books? I did not buy one of Robert S. King's poetry books. I already have The Gravedigger's Roots and The Haunted River, both excellent collections.
I bought a book by my good friend, Clarence Newton. For years I have begged him to put together a book of his poems because I wanted to have them available to read often.
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| Clarence Newton, poet and writer |
Like many who have lived a long life, this astute gentleman's words of wisdom in verse and his clever, tongue in cheek poems that make me laugh out loud will be cherished and kept on my book shelf.
He gave me permission to publish some poems from his book, Short Glances Forward and A Long Look Back.
Cycling
Nobody dies anymore.
Some pass on, others pass away.
Some go to heaven, others reincarnate.
Some go to hell.
A few spirits hang around as ghosts.
Some are convinced that this
matter of which we are made
is in a constant mode
of earth attachment and recycling.
Born of the cosmos, matter spun and whirled,
made to reason, wonder, laugh and cry,
guided by circumstances, seeds sown to wind,
we dance upon the crest of life's bell curve,
embrace hope, faith and serenity,
relishing fleeting moments of lust and love
thinking only of the present;
finally to metamorphose into particles of dust
and subatomic energy where goes body and soul
carried by whirlwinds of the ethereal universe,
from whence we came and so shall return.
A merry-go-round, this mysterious life
of consciousness, matter and will
where passions flare and time flies.
Clarence then writes this one:
Froggy
Three hopping friends
sat upon two logs
searching with buggy eyes
for a breakfast of flies
One had two and two had three.
then saluted with high fives
saying ain't life fun
when we're having flies?
Some people don't appreciate or understand poetry for one reason or another. My husband is one of them, although he likes to read poems by his wife from time to time.
ReplyDeleteMy father, on the other hand, is not a poet but likes to read poetry. He reads poems by such authors as Shakespeare, Robert Frost, and William Butler Yeats, but he also enjoys poems written by his daughter. How do you like that?
Abbie Johnson Taylor, Author of
We Shall Overcome
and
How to Build a Better Mousetrap:
Recollections and Reflections of a Family Caregiver
http://abbiejohnsontaylor.com/blog