"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]


Monday, March 21, 2022

R.E. Slater - Sunday Afternoons (a poem)




Sunday Afternoons
by R.E. Slater


Here I rest, enjoying
a hot, lazy, Sunday afternoon;
the perfect weather to read and write.
Well, any weather is though isn't it?
For a writer, you just go with the flow
of whatever a day brings.

Today, it dwells in thoughts of
earlier, dustier, dry summers
lived out in the country with only
my thoughts as company; the
hot scent of scorched earth against
your skin; and the quiet drone of
the browning hay and grain fields
lit in golden fire shielding the
restless crickets and grasshoppers, 
meadowlark and bobolink.

These were the days of youth,
when nothing else existed;
where all stood still
for the close observer to
discover; inhale; breathe in-and-out
the withering graces of a hot sun
uncaring its habits or heats; of a
life lost upon the endless stretches
of undulating grain fields broken
occasionally by rutted tractor paths
worn down with time and usage.

In those days all was quiet.
Without demand. Simple.
Distant. Unhurried.
Mediating time with space.
No need of anything... but love.
And the seldom companionships
which occasionally drove up
upon the dried lawns; unexpected
visitors; happy of heart; generous
with their smiles; come to stay, to
remember, to speak of the old days
and the old ways; come to visit our
hilly, forlorn homestead, itself an
island to yesteryear's afterglow - 
but not of its laterly progress
downwards; drained upon the lands
of time of livestock and working hands.
But for the moment, for this Sunday,
this holy day of rest and contemplation,
absent past histories lived on in their
sweet memories of toiling fellowships,
earthy work, the grind, dust, dirt,
oil, gas, tractor, and warm barns.
But now, for the day, all stood still,
lost upon the deep recesses
of mind and heart

These were the lost lands which time forgot.
Bereft of its previous lives and families,
whither native or pioneer, premodernist
or urban dweller, who once had stopped
living on the golden lands of blessing,
abandoned - for one reason or another -
to the streams of time. Which now 
lie in the drone of the field crickets
in their ageless rhythms; or like an
older earth belatedly encumbered
by the weary human habitations
of pestilence, war, drought, or disease.
Lately become unnatural to its ancient
rhythms beyond the gentle goodness
the land once bore. Living beyond its
circle of days and years, uncaring
the burden but its own sorrows.
Nonetheless progress came. Unstopped.
Unwanted. Undoing. To a land beyond
time; and a time beyond modern 
remembrance; of a sudden; in the
blink of an eye; within a short generation;
taking with it an old, weary, world
forlorn and neglected, like so many
other things forgotten; a modern day
demanding sustenance beyond what
the good earth could provide for the
times which were given to those
unworthies unwilling to walk
any further its burnt landscapes,
hardships, or natural rhythms.

Refusing what was, for what could be,
and thereby refusing earth's wisdoms;
which seldom come to a hurried mankind
bearing stopped ears which cannot hear;
holding eyes full of cravings unnatural.
Nay, here lay a dying land that knew
it was dying but stayed its death for a time
upon the nether wanderings of those few
who stayed upon the hot days
remembering the shattered remains
now lying here, now there, like whatnot
lying about my feet; discarded things
used long before I had life; or had yet borne
the torpid breath of a burning land
faithfully obeying its summers and
seasons as they came and went
year after year after dying year.

Where blessing lived long beyond all else.
Where beauty was seen by inward souls
looking outwards beneath a burning sun.
And when looking, finding contented
satisfaction known only by earth's
oldest peoples who sang of its beauties,
its hardships, its wilderness become
familiar to the one who had stopped
to listen and feel the land's breath.
Who considered the ways of the ant,
the insect, the grasshopper, and beetle.
Whose paths beat along the hot breezes
slipping in-and-out upon the turned
brazened face searching for relief.
Knowing a circumspection which must
come to every living being willing
to stop and listen; beholding an
earthly wisdom where none else
could be found in the accumulating
days of farming heat and dry weather.


R.E. Slater
July 5, 2015

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