 "Metaphysics of Something Red," by Patricia Nolan Note to Reader
Sharing childhood experience with my little patients on 2 East in Breaking Little Bones was an enjoyable task in writing my book. The same also was true when I told my own tales of being a young boy to my daughter, Hilary. At the turn of the twenty-first century, we visited the Humphrey homestead in southern Michigan and stood on the foundation of the red barn of my youth. Hilary asked me to cite this poem; it's one of her favorites, mine too. The poem and Pat's watercolor were part of the 2010 Visual Artists' Exhibition; "Voice, Verse, and Vision. Among my synapses cycle the realities of childhood. The largest building on our homestead, a three-story barn, lofts, windows - all set on fieldstones carefully fitted and joined by mortar. Musty aromas in the lofts, before the midday breeze, sweat of a well-worked horse in the evening stalls. The omnipresent ammonium from the lower pens. Cooing pigeons in the eaves. Stomp of an impatient equine on wooden planks. Slosh of hooves in manure and mud. Functional doors. A few smaller on ground level, pig-and sheep-sized larger opened onto the meadow, bovine-big doors. At the end of an earth ramp, double doors, a team of Belgians and wagon wide. Within, piles of hay for a jumping boy to throw at his tag-along sister, airborne dust caught a shaft of light. If my dendrites and the foundation are all that remain, then: Why do the stones echo distant sounds? Why do faint odors hide in the cracks? And why is the barn still so red? ---------------------------------------------------------------- The Magpie Cried by Ben Humphrey Finishing Line Press p 23, 2013
0 Comments
 Note to Reader
My parents were both avid readers and bed time was a chance for my mother to share her love of books with me. It also a quiet time, no distractions, only my mother's voice. That time from childhood would carry over into my adult years. Here’s a poem about that entitled Passages She made my bed in the morning so, at night when I crawled in the covers were all arranged, yet there was that reassuring ritualistic tuck. Bed time stories, poems when I was six, were read to me when I was very young. Another safe passage into the night, in a snug place; I was never afraid of the dark. Those tucks, those words were there for later passages many foreboding all in the dark. I still have the books and a blanket. When all is quiet in my head I can still hear her voice - reading. -------------------------------------------------------- The Magpie Cried by Ben Humphrey Finishing Line Press p 7, 2013 |
AuthorBen Humphrey is a retired professor of pediatric oncology. He started to write poems in 2005. His poems have appeared in American and European journals. In 2013, he was chosen as Colorado's Senior Poet Laureate by the Angels Without Wings Foundation. (Monterrey, CA) ArchivesCategories |
RSS Feed