A Childhood Memory

The following sonnet, "Swans and Snowy Egrets (c. 1958)", can be found on the back cover of my new book, Pointing Home (Kelsay Books, 2019).

Missing those days of old on this New Year's Eve . . .

Swans and Snowy Egrets (c. 1958)

Each freeze-frame recollection is a treat

I stash to savor when the road gets rough,

devouring the bitter with the sweet—

you might say I’m addicted to the stuff.

This smorgasbord is where I go to cheat

time’s arrow or to call the black dog’s bluff;

where tares are never sown among the wheat,

and everything is cool and up to snuff.

As when I see the paint-by-number kit

painstakingly completed by his wife,

who, out of mother love and mother wit,

has tried to trim a plain, no-nonsense life.

While he, who in my eyes stands ten feet tall,

frames the kitsch and hangs it on the wall.