The Beginning and the End

     I wrote in another post how my poems are an extension of my journal, a true chronicle of my inner life. Here is the first poem I wrote in 2011:


OPTIMISM

Be captivated by the light,
the hidden colors in its whitest ray,
the gleanings gathered in the bright of day,
and take them with you into night.

Seek out the modest gleam of dusk,
the varied values of its subtle hues,
the finished golds beneath the muddled blues,
and spread them out upon the dust.


And here is the last of 2011:


AWAITING DAWN

I dwell in Possibility. ~ Emily Dickinson

I find this shifting space
a questionable habitation. Hope
remains a nocturne scarcely audible;
I scratch the notes into my book of songs
with feathers sharpened by a bitter blade.
What prayers are wrought inside this cage of night
become a liquor brewed from sorrow's rain,
libation for the hosts that crowd my bed,
that carol with the confidence of those
who've passed the night of possibility
and woke to tell the tale. Theirs are the songs
my pen stays poised above the page to write.
However many feathers used and tossed,
I know the dawn will never come until
these songs are done.


     Of course, I wrote this poem shortly after my father died. Here's hoping that 2012 will see more poems like "Optimism" issue from my pen!

["Optimism" first appeared in the online journal The Road Not Taken: A Journal of Formal Poetry]