Poetry as journal

Ever since I started writing poetry, I find that I long to share some of what I’ve written with you, my loyal reader. However, so much of what I am writing is like a personal journal, and, as such, would have to be heavily filtered before I would be willing to put it out in public “for daws to peck at.” Either it is too personal, or it is about events that would take too long to explain, or alludes to images that simply wouldn’t make sense if you weren’t either me, or my Best Beloved. So, while much of my poetry isn’t technically written *for*, or *to* her, much of it is inscrutable to anyone but her. And that’s ok. I write primarily to express ideas that clamor in my head, demanding to be expressed, not because it’s particularly necessary that anyone ever read them.

So, I have a half-dozen pieces that I’d like to share, but one after another, I’ve eliminated them, because they would require too much explanation, and so could never stand on their own. Perhaps when I’m dead and famous, some critic can go back and try to figure out what the heck I was yammering about. 😉

Here’s the one that remains, and there’s one other that I might post, if I can persuade myself that it would not be misinterpreted by the few people whose opinions I care about.

Time

May 11, 2007

Time is both enemy and friend
we urge it on, beg it to stay
scream at its sluggishness
and rail at its flight.

Please, please stay, linger with me
preserve the sweetness of each moment,
and be gone from me,
thief of my life, thief of my joy,
destroyer of my patience, of my youth
and of my innocence.

Each moment, like a rare drop of dew
on the petal of an already-wilting poppy,
each moment rolls slowly by – far too slowly,
and is gone, forever, before there is
time to notice that it was ever there.