Short narrative poems reflecting an American boyhood in the 1940s.
The poems in After the War Was Over depict a boy’s childhood in post-World War II America. Focusing on everyday events, the author creates a world lived through the perceptions, observations and remembrances of a child. Holidays, family members, pets, food, toys, world events, death, books and movies…Incidents, relationships and experiences both mundane and profound are portrayed in a way that defines both the child and the era in which he was growing up. Several poems also explore the nature of these events as they are recollected in maturity, where they have become part of the fabric of an entire life. Memory thus serves to give new meaning to the adult the boy has become, as well as providing ongoing joy in the act of remembering. Readers of a certain age will identify with the world of a child growing up in the 1940s. Readers of all ages will relate to the inner life of the narrator as he experiences life as it was and as he remembers it.
Excerpt
Introductory Poem to the book:
REARVIEW MIRROR
The summer days
And winter nights
That seemed to last forever
Are long left behind
And now time narrows
Like the line before you on
A flat Kansas highway
Where tomorrow’s hours
Overtake and pass today’s
And ten years seem like
Ten minutes if you’re lucky
To reach that tiny speck
You’re headed for faster than
You ever thought you’d travel
So you ignore the onward rush
Set yourself on cruise control
Open your inward eye
And you look back
Further back
Searching yesterday’s
Winding roads for
What’s gone before
What’s fallen away
Hidden and scattered
Dimly seen but there
Still there
Waiting to be
Discovered
Waiting to be
Remembered
The songs and art in this book are about our collective emergence after the pandemic and trauma of the last few years - comprised of 5 collections: World as Refuge, Where We Live, In Our Hands, Rhythms of Change and What We See & Sow.
