Written over the period of one year, this poetry collection follows the author's existential despair and depression, the therapeutic process, and the discovery of inner peace found in the truthfulness and beauty of our natural environment. This deeply personal journey is shared by the poet to help others realize they are not alone as they travel their own difficult and distinctive road in search of individual purpose, meaning, and authenticity.
Preface
This collection of poetry was written during the the great recession of 2009-2010 and the great depression of my soul. As thoughtful people know, every life experience comes with gain as well as loss. For me, with the loss of society's definition of employment, there came the time and space for a bursting period of creativity. It took hard work and sometimes incredible pain to push aside Western cultural notions of meaningfulness to find something much better, much richer, infinitely more important than the corporate ladder climb to spiritual death. Instead I climbed the Ramapo Mountains, and there I found myself.
Excerpt
The Edge
Creative people have thin borders, they say.
We glide on the paper’s edge
arms outstretched
our fountain pen as balancer
despite leaking black ink droplets,
such a precarious balance between
inspired and insane.
This fluid flow of conscious and unconscious
spawns a breeding tidal estuary of
infinite
pain
and
joy.
At times we slip and grab hold
of the paper’s edge,
our feet kicking and breathing shallow,
and the paper bends
until we create
a great breeze of words that blow
like Jack taught us
and the paper rises
so we can pull ourselves up
laughing ready to play
on the edge again with our
ink-stained
fingertips
and
fleeting images.
“The woman or man who is a poet, or fiction writer, or playwright, or all of these, is engaged constantly in a jazz ballet of vocabularies, passions, genders, histories, perspectives, death, love, and life. The music of revelation announces itself to
