"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]


Sunday, April 13, 2014

R.E. Slater - Awakening (a poem)




Awakening
by R.E. Slater


Not all at once,
perhaps slowly,
sleepily,
spring awakened
upon an early April's
rhapsodic graces,
heavy with night's
waning fragrances
of cleansing rains,
that wouldst free
bound earth
of dreary winter's
retreating embraces,
and there lie,
quietly alone,
in subduing lights,
remembering
days past bourne
of deeper stirrings,
more ancient callings.

Listening intently,
the haunting verve
of faraway geese
honking in muted,
cacophonous chorus,
its eager flocks
circumscribing
dawn's grey lights
on tireless wing,
carving cold airs
plundering forward
in diminishing echo,
till lost at last,
as quickly as heard,
upon receding memories
of an earlier dawn's
distant birth,
and nevering lands,
beckoning home,
both wont and will.

Remembering
more ancient stirrings,
of youth's lost keeps,
fled on a dawn's
dying echoes sounding
its tympanous chorus
to the burgeoning day,
cleaving its leas,
its forlorn streams,
its desperate byways,
upon a stubborn heart's
resolute dreams
that northward lay
its eternal abodes,
its minstrel lays,
its nethering dawns,
in the early waking lights,
of a new day's arising,
beheld of stout heart,
and faithful Maker.

In whose hands
no charge so deep,
nor call so hard,
is miskept,
nor distant dies,
on a morning's call,
and sounding charge,
affecting wing and heart,
mind and keep,
the eternal flyways
of the beating breast,
pressing wing and voice,
man and beast,
its steady rhythms
of renewing dawns
tissued in membranes
of rebirth, of
time and space,
unto filioqued lands
of more primal decree.


- R.E. Slater
April 12-13, 2014

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