ISBN: 9781738064106
I write no deeper poem
But thought and rhyme
My life’s trail to mark
With blazing on the bark
That I might then divine
My shadowed way to home
 
Within this memory
 Aspen birch and pine
Blazing October
Colours this heart of mine
Setting feet restless
Upon memory’s road
Visiting places that
Be no more
                                                                         But living wild
                                                                         Within this memory

All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. – Oscar Wilde
 
I am still the little boy wanting one person, maybe me, to understand my soul and hug.
 
“The memories, even the hard ones now sweetened by time, roiled in his mind as the water did at the bottom of the falls, with big splashes of time suddenly leaping into view. When they washed against the hard surface of reality, they left a bright sheen, a memory of their passing.”
–From Echo of the Whip-poor-will (Don Hayward – 2018)
 
I do not intend the verses below to aspire to, or imitate great or even good poetry. If the reader approaches verse from a literary perspective, I suggest they not bother proceeding further. As the sub-title says, these are the margin notes to my life. I have recorded my thoughts and feelings at various times and from an early age have expressed them in crude verse and rhyme. The quality will be uneven. I have included things here that evoke something in me. Re-reading these makes me re-examine my thoughts, feelings and attitudes and gives me a sense of change, if not progress. There is no definite chronology here. The verses are not in rigid order from youth to now.
Some thoughts, attitudes and feelings may not apply now to my thinking. Notes, after all, exist as mere reminders of a special place in a story. We grow and learn as the story develops. In the same way that the male-centrist nature of some of this reflects both the time when entitled males were generally ignorant of gender bias and the reality that I intend the male in much of this to be the writer.
My reactions to reading these records will likely escape the reader. Those might become the subject of another verse or two some night when I immerse myself in these and feel melancholy. For now, they remind me of people, places and circumstances that are important.
I hope that you find these interesting and perhaps, if good at all, they will raise a smile, a thought or a tear.

New verse added from time to time

2024 Decay

Despite the pride of man had built
With boast and fanfare to the hilt
The legacy of the great will be
For only desperate eyes to see
Decay and mourned by winds it must
End in moss, and rust and dust.