LI

Don June 5th, 2009

LI Wordsworth wrote an endless poem in blank verse on” the growth of a poet’s mind.”  I shall attempt a more modest feat for a more distracted age: a blog, “Things which a Lifetime of Trying to Be a Poet has Taught Me.” 

            I do not miss the upper Midwest with its interminable winters and cheated falls and springs.  But I am glad I experienced it because of the poignancy the looming endlessness of winter gave to the brief moments of fall: its beauty came with a certain weight behind it because of the heaviness of what one knew it would inevitably bring.  And that weight adds weight to the biblical petition, “Lord, teach us to number our days, that we may present to thee a heart of wisdom.”

 FALL, 1974 

The corn-stalk brown looked almost white

Beside the black limbs of the trees:

A bleak etude in dark and light,

A prelude to the coming night

When endless miles of deep, soft white

Are all the wanderer sees.

Donald T. Williams, PhD

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