Newsgroups: rec.arts.poems
Subject: Dreams & Youth
From: bgrueber@desire.wright.edu
Date: 29 Jul 92 23:44:43 EST
Organization: Wright State University 

Here are a couple of poems I have shared individually with a couple of people. 
Some feed back would be nice.  
Share A Dream


Let's us just once share a dream.
Nothing fancy and nothing great
But a dream none the less
Which in itself makes everything important.

How can I explain the brilliance
Of the dream turned to dust
By hands unfeeling and sensing
Nothing crueller can be imagined.

It is now that dreams become nightmares
Of the daylight hours where forgiving
Is possible but forgetting is not until the sun
Goes down in the west for the last time.

Can any dream return to the dreamer
From the shards created by frigid hands
Whose only touch is that of self concern and pride
Which kills hope with a swift finality.

To be able to dream again with the joy of the lost youth
Where all things were possible even dead soldiers rising 
From the battle field just in time to return home
To a mother's warm and caring enfolding, loving arms.

What has been lost cannot be recovered
What is dreamed cannot be lived
Without possession of faith and confidence
In oneself and his fellowman.

Yesterday those were taken away
Along with many dreams and hopes
For the brighter tomorrow in the sunshine
So what will happen in the remaining night.




			Passage to Youth

It is time to sally forth once again
Into the youthful past of Hocking Valley 
Where exists too that place of Arden
Which even the Athenian god's jealously guard
The tranquility of its childhood seasoning and solace.

The mid-summer sun begins the fall lean in the sky.
Leaves rustle around yet green acorns
And tree shadows growing in the descending sun.
Bringing thoughts of the hills ablaze in yellows, oranges, and reds
To the yet vibrant greens of tree awash with the sap of life.

Oh, how I long to recapture the short days spent
Exploring my grandfather's farm high on the ridge
Reliving the first awakening of vernal joy and adventure
Ambling along paths made old by primal creatures.

My backyard was the forest expanse then
It seemed such an infinity of green against blue.
In the eye small and wide of the chaste child.
Maybe I realized I was so small in a place so large.

Emily within her guarded garden wall
Would understand how budding dreams will fall.
Emily from her protected unchanging landscape
Where garden was garden always to be
Knew the riddle and the game without leaving the santuary.
She saw birth,metamorphosis death, and after
In all that flew, slithered and crawled through and over her wall.

Emily never left her place of innocence
She clutched her ragamuffin through the portal bright
While I ran away from the waif in the wildwood.
Whose crime is greater hers or mine
To stay concealed, freezing time within a stone fenced garden
Or leaping over the garden wall and running
Willy nilly from the valley and the hills
In search of what I had always had
And could always find if I stopped to take the time

But once youth is past and its energy spent
One can only reflect on what has been
Or what could have been or is yet to come.
Living for the here and now becomes a threat
Loving and touching beyond the barrier of the small secure patch
Carries terrors found only in the nightmares of the little ones.

So as I sallied forth to the Hocking Valley
With my waif hidden away in the vale of my heart
Much as Emily remained in her fortress garden.
The time for dewy moments in the shade light of the forest
Are to bring a ripening to life and its meaning through
Untried knowledge, fresh experience never to forget.
I think these are now mine to take with me.

If my hidden waif matures and out grows its vale
Will I again visit these forests deep?
Will I ever plunge deep through its brambled edge?
Will I be welcomed again as I was
When the first of youth was recalled and released?

   +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Like so many others I look for places who will publish and pay.  Right now I am
only glad to find a place where poems can be read by a few literate people.

Enjoy

Bob


From: daq@hpfcso.FC.HP.COM (Doug Quarnstrom)
Date: Mon, 20 Jul 1992 18:32:06 GMT
Subject: Re: Kills 3
Organization: Hewlett-Packard, Fort Collins, CO, USA