Rhythms Of An Impenitent Life
by
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Tadpoles In A Jar.
I very nearly killed the child,
The child with tadpoles in a jar,
Whose dog was just a breath away,
Who walked beneath a different star.
This son of man with raven hair,
Who offered life a faulted grin,
And emptied books like whiskey jars,
For words to shout above the din.
I watched him then when aged just ten,
He cast his faith in god away,
And strew with stones the upward path,
That leads to where he is today.
I very nearly killed the child,
When placed ambition made him mean,
While others set the honey trap,
Like actors in his painted scene.
A fretful fool who wanted hope,
When hope was only callow style,
Who danced as satyrs pulled the strings,
And walked alone his pilgrims mile.
I watched him then at twenty five,
Forget his sense and then comply,
To have and to lose the kind of love,
That made his muse a bitter lie.
I very nearly killed the child,
When life laid bare a crooked road,
Where gods foretold an early end,
The time to cast away the load.
No faulted grin to ease the way,
With life endangered wracked with fear,
With lifelessness a breath away,
The pilgrims staff and satyrs tear.
I watched him then at fifty some,
Grasp at a feather, strive to win,
And self forgiving find his hope,
In what was seen as greater sin.
I very nearly killed the child,
But now instead I set him free,
The jar of tadpoles in my hand,
Is proof at last the child is me.
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About the Book
A collection of poems spanning the period from the 1940’s to the present day.
Conventional enough to rhyme ‘Rhythms Of An Impenitent Life’ is an observational study of the authors singular but unorthodox existance and his continuing struggle with the inner self. From childhood confusion to the safe haven of a happy marriage the poems chronicle aspects of the human condition and range variously from pathos to humour and from wanton desire to the gentle homecoming of absolute affection.
About the Author
Though for more than twenty years the resident of a small and very rural North Yorkshire village I was born and had all my education in the greater city of the West Riding. A product of my time I can look back on many eventful years as both observer and participant in the social and political activities of both these counties.
The second son of a seagoing engineering officer and a minor union official I was raised in an Anglo / Italian household dominated by a powerful mother and my resourceful but remarkably volatile grandmother.
During a varied adult life I have felt the strictures of uniformed service sold my soul to the marketeers in the pursuit of money and was employed for a period by the UK’s most famous private psychiatric hospital.
Having concluded that it is never enough to be satisfied by the mundane or the obvious curiosity has filled my life and though variously this has brought me to adventure and discomfort it has remarkably never come near to killing this peculiar cat.
Fortunate but never lucky I have known the love or at least the loving of many women but as often as I fell into that rapture I found myself in stormy seas. Though somewhat unconventional my second marriage has brought me to a safe haven and being at last chaste and chastened my anchorage is now in calm and sheltered waters.
A creature of spirit my internal argument has always been between the inner dogmatist and the incorrigible romantic who surfaces when the toil of day is done.
I cannot and do not try to offer solutions; my verse is simply a comment on my experience; if I offend I do not regret it and if I provoke then so much to the good.