Beginnings

Painting word pictures. Each word a brushstroke.

All those brush strokes painting a picture. Each picture a memory. Each memory a poem. Each poem a journey. Each journey a revelation. Each of us alone together. Welcome to my gallery.

What a long strange trip it has been. From the highest highs to the lowest lows, from the brightest days to the darkest nights, I’ve travelled through them. Changed by the mysteries and circumstances that I have chanced upon.

These poems are a reflection of my life, the things I have seen and done, the feelings, the joy and the sorrow, all revealed in the words I write.

I have come late to the writing profession. Not starting to write until I retired. Succumbing to what I thought was a government propaganda slogan, “Freedom fifty-five. Who knew that in fact, it was an advertising slogan for a mutual fund and that contributions and planning and compound interest where what was required to make it work. So “Freedom Fifty-five,” or as I think of it as pursuing the benefits of abject poverty.

I was reviewing my portfolio with my financial advisor, and after he had crunched the numbers, he said, “So have you considered dying young?”

I said, “No, I planned to live long enough to become a burden to my children.” As I said, I started writing after I had retired. It was a Wednesday night, the middle of July, dead asleep, when I wake up with these two lines running through my head. I said, “Those are really good.” And got up and wrote them down.

If I might offer a word of advice to would-be writers. When the muses call, even if it’s a wrong number, write it down, or it will be gone faster than last night’s dream. Saturday morning I typed them into the ‘puter thinking to would go one way, when it took over and wrote itself. When I read what I had written a chill ran up my spine. The writer had been awoken, and I’ve been travelling that lost highway ever since.  Come, take the journey with me and see where it leads.