From time to time an inspiration to write a poem comes into my head and rattles about in the recesses of my brain until pen has been put to paper. Usually it's something silly or humorous (at least to me), but at times can be pensive and serious as well. I've taken my favorites and posted them here for your reading enjoyment/amusement/abuse (pick one). Mind you, I'm not so much into high-brow Haiku type poetry. I normally prefer that it rhyme and have a little rhythm to it when read aloud. Enjoy!
"Clouds" is a poem I wrote while staring out the window of an airplane (odds are it was a Southwest plane, but I can't recall for certain) at some storm clouds. It occurred to me that much before fifty years ago, the vast majority of mankind had never seen clouds from this perspective, and I thought - Wow, how lucky am I?
"Let the Other Shoe Drop" came out of perhaps the most difficult time in my adult life. Our oldest daughter was struggling with knee problems on her left leg where she was already wearing a prosthetic that gave us another set of struggles and worries. My wife told me one day that she was waiting for the other shoe to drop, meaning there was something even more dark and terrible around the corner that awaited us. Feeling defiant about whatever that might be, I was inspired to write this poem.
I wrote this poem in 1995 on the heels of the first international Ebola scare. It is one of my first efforts at poetry (after Clouds), and is very much written tongue in cheek (queue the sarcasm). Since then we've had an even bigger outbreak of Ebola, a new something with SARS, the Tokyo subway massacre and a host of other frightful news items to froth one's imagination into an absolute tizzy. Sadly war has since become a permanent fixture in the world, but so far most of us have survived.