I'm always trying to figure out why I go back time and again to writing poetry.  It's such a strange phenomenon.  Sometimes, like now, I'm allowed a glint.

      Poetry Is My Means

Poetry is my means:
To thinking out a thought;
To finding more about myself;
To analyzing good and bad:
To making tail or head
Of circumstance.



Poetry helps me define,
Refine,
Become a finer person,                
Binding my persona.



So many things I did not know
Of which I had not one iota
Of ability to see:
The ****, silly, plus the *****-nilly
Miracle of mind,
Its mysteries revealing hints
And hinting at the revelations
Which belong to geniuses
And saints:
Everything I ain’t.

In learning and forgiving            
Poetry is everything a giving gift
Can give.

Poetry Is My Means 4.15.2018 The Processes: Creative, Thinking, Meditative III; Revelations Big & Small; Arlene Corwin

as the shadows speak to one another
in whispers above my traveling thoughts
what to make of this seeker of deeper dreams

I surprise them when I hear their voices
through the lucid silence and
the bending seams

like a surgeon's surprise
when a patient's eyes
flash open from deepest slumber
they are drawn to me
in my dream scape sea
and 333 is my number

though I be the one in search of answers
there are questions within you I raise
for the King of lost souls
and graveyard dancers
can provide you a glimpse
of your living days

A phenom pursue movement
by midnight if entrained encampment
flush by her heels while quatrain will absorb
when she only a heaping there in life with
hers round circumference as deeply met
for a week if her sorcery became a tempest rife
in horsepower with such antigen that an earthquake
with even more liquefaction than mere mention
on cruises her regression must also play into her automobile
and forebode her ritual in speeding in class action.

Home bound after work
near 12:30 am
just a few minutes from checking my email
then retiring
as us old folks like to call it

from the North side of route 7
at a slight angle
there and gone in half a second
was the biggest meteor I've ever seen
if that's what it was
so big that I slowed and listened for a boom
but nothing came
I have no idea how far it went before touching down
but this isn't about the meteor
this is about the fact that when I got home
and thought about who I would tell...
there was no one that came to mind
I've seen so much crazy **** in my life
that the stories have grown old
even the new ones
I breathed life into a dead woman one morning
then faced the fact that I couldn't save another
hit by a truck on my way home
just after midnight

on the day before the great Russian meteor
I saw 2 objects in the sky on fire
and not moving...
in broad daylight
I've been touched and spoken to
by spirits or ghosts or phantoms
take your pick
I saw 3000 people sacrificed in the name of what?
and as a child I witnessed a president murdered by those supposed to follow him
I've grown to see the young know nothing of that last President who actually had a vision and a spine

and when I quietly leave this life
there will be little to note...
a brief glance
of my obituary
by a few sad souls

I often think of a quote I heard as a young man
by a comedian; George Gobel
who was on the 'Tonight Show'
Dean Martin and Bob Hope were also on that show
and unknown to George, Dean was flipping his cigarette ashes
in George's drink as he was telling his humorous stories
this caused the laughs to come out of sequence...and finally a confused George said; 'Did you ever feel like the world was a tuxedo and you were a pair of brown shoes?'

what a wonderful coincidence to discover that when I look up  
one of my two favorite words
threshold
it is linked to my other favorite word
phenomenon
but my life is laced with coincidence
my third favorite word
they happen daily
like itches

for instance,
today I did a wikipedia search for Ezra Pound
because my poetry student daughter fell in love with one of his pieces
I find that from 1945 to 1958
Mr Pound was incarcerated at St Elizabeth's Psychiatric Hospital in Washington D.C. after being found incompetent to stand trial
for treason against the United States
my father worked at St Elizabeth's hospital for 30 years
including the 12 that Mr. Pound was a patient
my father, who kept his poetry hidden in a little black book

I have a vision of him
young at the time
enamored with the 60 plus year-old poet
seeking him out and finding him
resting outside at one of the tables
enjoying the simplicity and intricacies of nature
and perhaps they have a chat about poetry...
my father having a chat with Ezra Pound
70 years before his granddaughter falls in love
with one of his poems
a poem already written and filed away somewhere in the memory of a once beloved poet

threshold: the magnitude or intensity that must be exceeded for a certain reaction, phenomenon, result or condition to occur or be manifested.
“nothing happens until the signal passes the threshold”