Dumbo the Occasional Poet - #1: "Passage of Poetry"

My first post in this blog was about a poem I wrote a long time ago, "Then and Now". Somehow, after that, I had stopped sharing my poems in this blog. In fact, I had stopped writing poems for quite a while. The last time I wrote something that I was bold enough to call a poem was when I was inspired by a couple of photos taken by a friend at his hometown. Perhaps I had forgotten the joy of stringing words together to make a poem, but I suddenly have this desire, now, to start doing that again...

Well, before I find the inspiration to write something new, let me first share with you another poem I had written, also from quite a while ago. It is called "Passage of Poetry".

***

"Passage of Poetry"

When I was a child,
Poetry was a dash of color, gone wild;
some painted it bold, some painted it mild;
altogether, they were puzzling to a child.

When I was a teen,
Poetry was a love song, eager and keen;
some sang in passion, some sang in esteem;
altogether, they were dazzling to a teen.

Then as I came of age,
Poetry sang, in ethereal message:
Of love, of life, of days gone in passage;
Of faith, of hope, of sagacious adage;
A cosmic scene in word-bound package,
a soaring bird not of earthly cage---

And now that I'm old,
Poetry is a winter fire, crackling coal;
Partly companion, partly to ward off cold;
above it all, it keeps sizzling in my soul.

***

Again, as I mentioned before in that first post, do not believe everything I wrote in my poems. First of all, I'm not old! I'm in my mid-thirties right now. Unless you consider that old.

Then, there's that part about poems being dazzling to a teen... well, I can't honestly say I was - when I was a teen - dazzled by anything other than whatever my hormones were steering me toward. :-D... I think I speak for most teens in that matter. ;-)

But I do hope that when I am old, I would still have passion for words and other mediums of art, as depicted in the last stanza. I have seen too many old people live without passion, without colors in their lives, their sole purpose in life having expired after their children had grown up and established their own families, and I do not want to walk down that same path myself.