Love Affair with Books

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Truest love, ever near, from my spring till winter.

Your warm, supple skin is sheer delight to my touch.

Gliding fingers up and down your spine tell me

That, truly, Heaven’s gates have opened to me.

Treasures long hid from me cause my heart to

Melt as your trove of precious thoughts works

The wheels of my mind, inspiring and feeding it.

Your message is not a useless tale but an ardent declaration

Meant for people of the world to read, to ponder, to act upon.

Men and women seek what lies between your covers, though,

At first glance, they may not recognize your inherent worth.

Not until you, O cherished Book of books, reveal what you

Offer to mankind's newly opened eyes and waiting hearts.

You are my delight, the essence of my being, my will to live.

nancy drew

That was amusing and I was inspired to begin writing something in response. However, as it developed I decided to back off on this one.

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That's all right, Nancy! What matters is that you are inspired to write.

Best Wishes!

No, it's not that I hate reading itself because I love stories. Stories that take me somewhere outside of my miserable life. Life in Montrose is as boring as it gets and since Mom hardly ever lets me out of her sight since "it" happened. Granny lives with us and she's blind but loves the Good Book so guess who has the lovely job of reading Scripture to her EVERYDAY? That would be yours truly. Well, she's sweet to me though she's not too keen on Mom as Adela -- Granny -- is my loser father's mother. He walked out on us six months ago and Granny blames Mom, but I don't feel that's entirely fair.

Anyway, I read to her after the breakfast dishes are cleared up and put in the sink. We're in the Psalms now and Granny says she loves my voice and how I put feeling into the laments of David, who was probably a bigger sinner than me but God spared him. I try to focus on the Lord's words for Granny's sake because she has nothing but Mom and me and she calms down when I take her by the hand through the Valley of the Shadow of Death but we come out on the other side.

She loves me so much, so she says. I can't let her down because she talked me into staying alive after my bad sin. I can't help it. I see them out there while I'm reading words of peace and love and they want me to follow them to do bad things. I couldn't help it one day and put the Bible down and said to my granny that I had to go check on something outside.

I followed them . . . we went into the woods. . . .

LoveUniHateExams

@CoCo - nice poem!

I don't usually write poetry but you've inspired me to take a stab at it and put pen to paper, er, fingers to keyboard.

I had an idea about writing summer turning into winter, plus I've been thinking a bit about my dad recently. So I decided to combine the two. It's not a nice poem in that it doesn't come from a nice place:

Summer has gone

And the days shorten.

All good things must come to an end.

Steady rain and howling wind

Replace the sun’s warmth,

And the trees start to drop their leaves.

Flickering fires and hissing radiators

Keep out the chill night air.

Fresh blossoms are but a distant memory.

First Bowie, then Prince

And now him.

Nothing lasts forever.

The years roll by

Oh, how time flies

And then he dies.

Well, what do you think? Should I write more of this crap or leave it to proper poets?

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Dear LoveUniHateExams:

Brilliant in its brevity and imagery! There is no dead wood (which I continually hack from my forest of excess verbiage). When I originally wrote my poetry, it was here, on JWD, and over a span of nearly a dozen years. I had thirty minutes to edit. So, go figure!

Please DO write more and inspire us, whether here or your own thread. If you write it out first on, say, Notepad (Yahoo) or your e-mail account (and send it to yourself), you can perfect it before posting here.

Gratefully, . . .

LoveUniHateExams

Thanks, CoCo.

Just to say, I didn't read your poem and tap mine out in 2 minutes ... ta-da perfect.

I had a few lines in my head last night and wrote it and saved it on a Microsoft Word document. It was pretty easy to make it so that it had some kind of structure. I think I did it in about 30 minutes. It's supposed to have verses (stanzas?) of three lines per verse, so there should be a gap between 'All good things ...' and 'Steady rain ...', another gap between 'And the trees ...' and 'Flickering fires ...', etc.

I wouldn't have dreamed of posting it here because I didn't know if it's any good at all but I guess reading you encouraging others to have a go made me post my own effort.

It doesn't come from a nice place but I do like the way summer becoming winter can be seen as a metaphor for growing old. Plus, I guess I found it somewhat easy to come up with poetry about the weather turning - 'chill night air', 'flickering fires', 'glowing embers', etc.

LoveUniHateExams

I vaguely remembered reading a poem by Clive James, called Japanese Maple and that compared aging and dying to winter, although it also had life going on after its author Clive James' life. Thankfully Clive is still with us, I think.

Here's his poem, Japanese Maple, in full:

Your death, near now, is of an easy sort.
So slow a fading out brings no real pain.
Breath growing short
Is just uncomfortable. You feel the drain
Of energy, but thought and sight remain:

Enhanced, in fact. When did you ever see
So much sweet beauty as when fine rain falls
On that small tree
And saturates your brick back garden walls,
So many Amber Rooms and mirror halls?

Ever more lavish as the dusk descends
This glistening illuminates the air.
It never ends.
Whenever the rain comes it will be there,
Beyond my time, but now I take my share.

My daughter’s choice, the maple tree is new.
Come autumn and its leaves will turn to flame.
What I must do
Is live to see that. That will end the game
For me, though life continues all the same:

Filling the double doors to bathe my eyes,
A final flood of colors will live on
As my mind dies,
Burned by my vision of a world that shone
So brightly at the last, and then was gone.

compound complex

LUHE:

Thanks for explaining the why and wherefore of your poem.

Much of what we write comes from a not-so-good place. If I hadn't suffered through divorce and my questionings about who I am, there would be a huge blank spot on CC's account. My poetry of that particular epoch sprang from anguish:

"You gutted my heart and let me die of love's sweet poison."

I'm quite all right now emotionally and find -- sadly? -- I have spilled that grief in full and have nothing more to say . . .

Your apt use of metaphor takes you from the realms of commonplace prose into the stratosphere of sublime poetic expression. Like your use of seasons, I referred to my spring till winter to illustrate my lifetime love of books.

BTW, are you familiar with "prose poetry" and how you might expand into an even broader field of self-expression?

Best.

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Thank you, LUHE, for that beauty by CJ. Interesting that I should care for two Japanese Maples for a client.

What he wrote perfectly summarizes my feelings, both physically and emotionally, as I wane. Little do I wax any more. I sense the drain and happily told a friend this morning I actually have the weekend off, for once.

Yet, no longer anticipating a New World of perfect health for eternity, I am content to while away my days in manageable income-producing activity with free time to spare.

Thank you for mentioning encouraging others to write. My students in creative writing class just love expressing themselves and it's all I can do to keep up as I correct their papers and urge them to write more and more and . . .

Love Affair with Books

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