The Poetry of R.E. Slater: R.E. Slater

"Autobiographies of great nations are written in three manuscripts – a book of deeds, a book of words, and a book of art. Of the three, I would choose the latter as truest testimony." - Sir Kenneth Smith, Great Civilisations

"I must write each day without fail, not so much for the success of the work, as in order not to get out of my routine." - Leo Tolstoy

I have never believed that one should wait until one is inspired because I think the pleasures of not writing are so great that if you ever start indulging them you will never write again. - John Updike

"The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it." - J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

Poetry is the shadow cast by our streetlight imaginations." - Lawrence Ferlinghetti

[Note - If any article requires updating or correction please notate this in the comment section. Thank you. - res]

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

R.E. Slater - Fog (a poem)

Fog

by R.E. Slater

Fog slips in unnoticed, breathless

veiling solitude’s cloaks of milky whites,

brushing cheeks and brows, wetted

upon shrouded mist’s silent hush.

Wispy filaments probe the atmospherics, listless

obscuring yellowing lamp globes in thickening haze,

clothing woods and fields dressed in white, drifting

somber paths of vaporous stealth.

Dimly lit homes recede from view, hidden

in greying worlds consuming sight,

bereft tall church spires yet retreating, bowed

like penitents enfolded spectral passage.

Be still my hurried heart, be still

on cat’s paws comes thy biding peace,

be not alone this covering night… rest, rest

prayer’s misty vapours ’neath the bidding lights.

R.E. Slater

October 25, 2011

Edited March 1, 2018

@copyright R.E. Slater Publications

AUTHOR’S NOTES

I thought to write “Fog” in a lisping hand conveying a fading intercourse between our everyday casual worlds of the present with the tympanous¹ worlds of our own making, whether past, present or future. And I crafted it in a simple hand, not rushed, but not overplayed, so that it would drift from passage to passage, line to line, just as the fog would do as it morphs and lifts in its vapors.

I also subdued the coloration of the font with a deft brush of black-gray to project unconsciously into the poem a feeling for its subject. Though I did think to produce a more diminishing scale from a font of black to subtler grays but did not wish to break the reader's attention being given to the poem onto a periphery issue.

I also wanted to interplay the words “biding” and “bidding” between one another in the last verse just like a foggy haze would interplay between our lit worlds of perceived clarity and our shadowy worlds of unsolved tension. Biding subtends the meaning of abiding, remaining, staying somewhere, with someone, at one time or another; whereas bidding interplays the meaning of temporalness with the additional meaning of summoning or inviting someone somewhere to something at some time. In essence, the fog is a metaphor for our lives determining whether we stay in place or go forward; whether we drift along caught-up in the outplay of casual events; or, actively re-determining the stages of our conscious being, our social obligations, our future plans.

Of course, there are other elements within this poem which I wish to remain unstated so that the reader may determine themselves how to read its main constructions. Whether plainly, as can always be done with a poem, or with the subtlety fraught within its shrouded lines and shaded meanings. This I try to do with each of my poems, some with more success than others.

Lastly, because of my great respect for Carl Sandburg’s poem, Fog, which I originally read when as a young boy, I wanted to include a small homage to his poem by using the phrase “on cat’s paws” as a way of saying thank you for this delightful verse he had written. Which poem can never be improved upon, succinctly, efficiently, proficiently or otherwise, scribed as ever a poet could scribe his observations and affections....