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I must have been thinking of the poems by Edgar Arlington Robinson such as "Miniver Cheevy" and "Richard Corey" which are  'word portraits' of complex individualr, perhaps actual persons he had known. I wrote this in 1971 for a course in Verse Writing and got an A.

                                       Sherman Murray

An artist came to town and antagonized the folk.

Paintings were cropping up all over, violently

   lavish prolificacies of color.

He never said "howdy" passing as he went.

Was gone half the time, never saying where.

Had a cat all scrawny and old, kept to itself.

Sold his cottage, hasn't been back.

Such were the comments during the short

interim they forgot him. 

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Exchanging emails with blogger Judy about haiku  and suchlike I came up with the notion to putting some of my poems, which I wrote  y-e-a-r-s  ago, here on the Voice, along with a bit of a setup about what went into their writing. I have a few poems which attempt to portray nature, and today's is one of those. I try to enter into the mode of being in which a woods or a park exists, where things follow a different set of rules than anything we understand.

LATE AUTUMN

The trees again expressed themselves this year -

They always tell us how to be alive

Within a world where change keeps balance hung

And separate trend makes total slow content.



Ground restiffened yields a bit when pressed

And leaves remind us they're not yet rejoined

The dark completeness where they find release

In sense unknown to passers-by above.

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Believe it or not, it's there beneath some of the whiny teenage voices of today.

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Each 2nd Tuesday we ( me, Anthony, Kathryn his wife, Clarice, Sam and Chuck)  are planning to pitch in at the CC Homeless Coalition facility at 1476 Kenesaw, cooking and feeding for all who show up and care to partake.   Last month we not only cooked and served the food, we also provided much of the food being cooked.  Anthony is going to look into trying to get the parish to provide funds for the food, and perhaps to recruit additional parishioners.  As is the way with most volunteers, we had a lot of fun and can't wait to do it again next month.

If you're interested in helping on a Tuesday please let me know.  Last week we started cooking at 4pm and had a wonderful spaghetti dinner ready by 5pm.  So we got a short break.  They let the hungry folk file in at 5pm but don't serve till 5:30pm.  It all happens so quickly!  We had everyone served and the place cleaned by 7;00pm.  Time flies when you're having fun!  Oh yeah, we get a break and a FREE MEAL including desert (Publix provides  delicious pies and the Family Table Restaurant in North Port provides nourishing soup).  The Coalition provides the drinks and much else.  Chuck provides the music by way of his personal boom box.

Chuck did yeoman work on the dishes.   Bill and Clarice waited on tables.  Anthony, Kathryn and Sam prepared and served food.  Luckily, we had a couple of regular volunteers, Faith and William, to help out with the pots and pans; cooking and serving, although I'm sure we could handled it ourselves if we had to.  We would just have to work a little harder and longer.

So think about joining us on the second Tuesday of the month.  We're going to need help when people go on vacation.  Anthony hopes his daughter Michelle might join us too;  the more the merrier!

Thanks to Chuck Lentine for his email report to our Wednesday Faith Enrichment group, on which I based this account. 

 

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Maybe seeking, finding and enjoying beauty is what life is all about. But it's not what we're all about. We are caught up in such exercises in futility, chasing not-so-beautiful rabbits we seldom catch. Make time for Beauty. It's all about us.

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I remember returning home from Chicago at Christmas time and watching the houses glowing in the darkness with a kind of warm, yellow light that symbolized safety and contentment. What might have been calling to me inside those homes may well have been the special area set aside as our gateway to God or whatever sense of higher awareness might be granted us.

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