What Is It to You? A Poem from the Revision of Atheists & Empty Spaces

joybragi84
5 hours ago
2 min read

I have no idea when I first wrote today's poem. It may have originally been in my old poetry notebook, the spiral one with the Space Van on the cover, the one that I wrote poems in, folded poems into, and carried with me through my whole life--until it was gone to who knows where. (I actually believe that someone stole it!) The original version of this poem might have been in that notebook, but it might not have. I could be dreaming the idea that this poem has been around forty years or so. Who knows?

I have heavily revised this poem from the last version for sure. It now has some rhyming lines. I have not checked the metrics on it because the pacing of the poem never really mattered. The only thing that matters is what "it" is. The meaning of "it" has changed for me many times throughout my life. Once, "it" was the idea of coming to grips with my own mortality. Another time, "it" was the responsibility of being a parent. But, every time I revise the poem, "it" changes. I think it would be interesting to know what readers think "it" is and why and how I sent "it" the message, and why "it" came when I clearly said, "Do not come." Drop me a line at my email mbt1966@yahoo.com, and offer some suggestions about what you think "it" may be. Then, and only then, will I tell you what "it" is.

As always, ENJOY!

The Message

I sent a letter.

“Do not come,” the message read,

And that is all the dispatch said,

But still it came.

The sun rose and set.

The sky flamed red but faded blue,

And I did what I had to do,

But still it came.

I did not sleep.

My dreams appeared in blacks and whites,

Feckless hopes in restless nights,

But still it came.

I did not gossip.

Rumors fled an empty house

Like whispered scratchings of a mouse,

And still it came.

The missive I sent

Was never read

Or else its meaning wound up dead

Because it came.

I feared I might be tested

When I warily requested,

“Do not come,”

And still it came.

Michael Thomas Thoughts on Poetry, Short Stories, Essays, and Ramblings-It's All Here in...

Beauty is the sole legitimate province of the poem.-Edgar Allan Poe

Poetry is when emotion has found its thought and thought has found words--Robert Frost

Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance--Carl Sandburg

I have nothing to say, I am saying it, and that is poetry--John Cage

You will find poetry nowhere unless you bring some of it with you--Joseph Joubert

Poetry is what in a poem makes you laugh, cry, prickle, be silent, makes your toe nails twinkle, makes you want to do this or that or nothing, makes you know that you are alone in the unknown world, that your bliss and suffering is forever shared and forever all your own. ~Dylan Thomas

What Is It to You? A Poem from the Revision of Atheists & Empty Spaces

The Message

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I find that I cannot exist without Poetry--without eternal poetry--half the day will not do--the whole of it--I began with a little, but habit has made me a Leviathan.-John Keats

We do not quite say that the new is more valuable because it fits in; but its fitting in is a test of its value.-T. S. Eliot

A man may praise and praise, but no one recollects but that which pleases.-George Gordon, Lord Byron

The great beauty of poetry is that it makes everything in every place interesting.-John Keats

The purpose of rhythm, it has always seemed to me, is to prolong the moment of contemplation, the moment when we are both asleep and awake, which is the one moment of creation.-W. B. Yeats