Wait For The Wisest Of All Counselors

“Wait for that wisest of all counselors, Time.”

Pericles

New Love, New Life

by Johann Goethe
Translated by A. S. Kline

Heart, my heart, what can it mean?
What could trouble you so?
What a strange new life, it seems!
You, I no longer know.
Everything you loved is done,
Everything that grieved you,
All your work and peace is gone –
How could this overtake you!

Are you caught by lovely youth
By that beloved form,
By those eyes so good and true,
By that all-powerful force?
When I try to run away,
Collect myself and flee,
In a moment my path strays
Back to her you see.

By that magic thread, so
That cannot be untied,
The dear wanton girl, oh
She holds me fast: and I
Must lie within her magic spell
And live where she may go.
How great the change, I tell!
Love! Love! Let me go!

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How often is what is perceived by other’s as being delusional the product of vacuity? I would like to think that I can avoid using this blog as a private confessional.  However, writing a blog and sending it out into the world is like speaking to an audience behind a veiled curtain. Readers are silent jurors who enter and exit through a different door than the one I use, with never more than a glimpse of their coming and going.  I never know who reads these words unless they choose to make their presence felt with a “like” or a comment.  I can see the footprints of readers from around the world as a count from a specific country on a specific page,  but I have no idea what they think or felt in reading the poems I select for my own enjoyment.  The greatest gift a reader can bestow is to take time to provide feedback, regardless if that feedback is positive or negative.  

Recognizing parts of my subconscious and conscious mind are laid bare on these pages, I attempt to at least not stray into self-absorbed prattle, worried that I will start sounding like a penitent looking for absolution.  Yet, if I write without admitting my human foibles, I risk sounding one-dimensional and even worse, the sin of all sins as a writer, sounding dull.  No one wants to read well-behaved words.  The magic of poetry is that I can let it speak for itself, let the poetry delve into the recesses of our minds, where the real adventures begin. The reader can decide if the postcards in words I have selected, either written by my hand or someone else’s, is an experience real or imagined. Regardless of where the words originated, each reader will take from it what they choose.

I was reminded over Christmas holidays, how others impose their own impulses, dreams, doubts, fears and motivations over the top of another’s creativity.  We each mix liberally analysis with anxiety to produce our own conclusions. Creative expression naturally welcomes criticism that, upon retrospect, seems perfectly logical, but may have nothing to do with the writer’s or artist’s intent.   It is most unsatisfying to dispel the myth of genius and admit simple-mindedness, offering up a boring explanation that I wasn’t bright enough to have intentionally created the connection they now so clearly see, which although should have been obvious to me at the time, was in reality, the product of complete ignorance or completely different motivation.  Isn’t this what makes being human so interesting?  We walk around contemplating the mundane and the magnificent with no comprehension of what anyone else is thinking at any given moment about a darn thing we are up to. Thank goodness!

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Lucky Penny Lover

By T. A. Fry

Lucky Penny Lover
Brimming in my brain
What did you discover
Swimming in the rain

Golden locks aplenty
Porridge to your taste?
Love me only gently
Don’t let us go to waste

Serene within your socket
Graceful in mid-flight
Put me in your pocket
Beauty fills my sight

Lovin’s in the air
Skin’s upon my mind
A smell inside your hair
Our poetry aligns

Does fingering or bowin’
Lift you to first chair
Does knitting or the sewin’
Make a King so rare

Circle round our souls
Lay me on your breast
Let’s just rock and roll
The hell with all the rest

Who’s the super hero
Complete with tights and cape
Slow from ten to zero
Nuzzle at my nape

Smudging with my poems
Words got in your eye
Budging, tho’ tend to roam
Please keep it a surprise

Torrid is our passion
Scalding is our heat
Florid in its fashion
Bawdy in its beat.

Turgid with desire
Lurid with our fate
Afresh in love’s attire
Despite its sprawling weight

Let’s wake up each day smitten
Let’s wake up each day stunned
Queen Mary – What’s to be written?
King Arthur – What’s simply done?

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© T. A. Fry and Fourteenlines, 2017. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this site’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to T. A. Fry and Fourteenlines with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.