Van Gogh’s Wheatfield With Crows. 1890
Forty Illusions Before Midnight
Birds never fly away
Fish never swim away
The sun never sets
We are idiots of ego
The only revolutions
That matter are the violent ones
The ones that force us to cast off
Me mine me mine
The only revolutions that matter
Are those that reveal
All is relative
All is contingent and evanescent
Like the leaf that falls because
She says so
The earth is not the center
Man is not the center
The self is not the center
Through time
There is no time
The great prophets
From Buddha to Einstein
Knew this and
Tell us to let go
Ego
Those who do not preach this
Are not great
Those who do not break us
From the habit of me me
Are not shattering
Anything
– by Douglas Pinson
Good confidence, wisdom and forcefulness. Why “forcefulness”? That could start a conundrum.
Yes. A conundrum. One could say the poem is too confident and not open enough. It needs another poem to balance it, perhaps. Always balance.
Hope all is well, Robert.
Good, in that we can always rethink our poems. I like your poem, to be clear (and by the way it is sometimes truly amazing what that long-ago poet laureate Mr. Tennyson accomplished in re-writes). But what I think I meant was something about THE FORCE, and it could be Star Wars and it could be Lao-Tze or anyone who is like a guide challenging you, but also, and THE FORCE is for positive good, it sometimes seems to me, no kidding, that this particular “force” is what now and then will be writing the poem, and not me, I mean not me at all! Plus other implications of “forecefulness”, which as confidence merged with full application and dedication (to the craft, for example) can get great results.