Second Poem

[VRWC]

Here's a poem I wrote several years ago that I found while moving.

I was born one morning
under a sky whose face had seen:
a border held against the Spanish fleet,
cotton fields picked bare by black men,
brothers dying in one another's arms.

It was on this stage that I entered,
before an audience that was not there,
only their ghosts lingered before me,
the silence broken by my footsteps,
that echoed in that lonely hall.
The applause, long having died out,
is now the music of memory.

The struggle of all those long years,
is told time and again, such that,
it seems the stuff of fiction,
amidst these careless years,
and I fear that in the end
the lights will go out on such an empty place.

For indeed, the rise and fall of Rome,
is told in two pages,
and the struggle of a solitary life,
is but the smoke from a candle's wick.

[Shea]

I absolutely loved this poem!

James 4:14

whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? It is even a vapor that appears for a little time and then vanishes away.


This poem seemed to describe my desires to have been born in a previous time. That's why I love classic literature because it brings those times alive for me in a way that I can't get from a regular history book. :oops: I even use any excuse to be able to wear old fashioned clothes! Note my renaissance wedding dress! :oops:

[VRWC]

Thanks Shea, I'm glad you liked it. It's funny you should mention the verse from James that was part of my inspiration for writing this poem.

I hadn't thought of it in exactly the same terms as your interpretation of the poem- but it works. Having grown up in the South, I was constantly reminded of the history of this part of America. It seemed to me when I was younger that so much had happened, and compared to my life, things are fairly boring now; like the circus left town before I could get a ticket. It wasn't until years later that I realized that one studies history from a compressed source, ie the rise and fall of Rome is told in two pages. An entire empire, one of the greatest the world has known, can be summed up in just two pages.

It's humbling for me to think of all the struggles man has gotten himself into, only to be forgotten in history. What is one Roman life compared to the entire history of Rome? Yet, God counts each one precious.