I like poetry a lot, but my personal taste pretty much stops with Frost and Yeats.

I like to pepper my novels with quotations from the Rubyiat, Masters, Tagore, and poetic scriptures from various religions. When an appropriate quotation is not available, I never hesitate to write a bit of poetry to develop a character or move a story along. Poetry written to purpose is not real poetry, but I will be including some of it in later posts as illustrations of the writing process.

Roses, out of the dry ground is a real poem, and the first I wrote as an adult.

Novels come over time, with a few flashes of inspiration and a lot of grinding work. I have enough novels waiting to keep me writing for the next three hundred years.

Poems only come when they come. For me that means rarely, but they are a treasured gift when they do come.

Roses, Out of the Dry Ground

The child fled
From harsh words and rough hands
And the uncaring glance that kills the soul,
To hide among the weeds and brambles,
The lizards and the hard cased beetles,
Where no voice comforts,
And no voice condemns.

There he found a rose, growing
          out of the dry ground.

Out of dirt, caked and broken,
Webbed down by spiders;
With dusty leaves,
          yet blooming.

The child reached out and touched a thorn
So gently that his finger did not bleed.
(For the child knew thorns)
Reached further, and touched the blossom, so gently
That its fragrance filled the desert air.

He sat long among the weeds
And gazed in wonder, that the rose,
So ragged, could still be sweet.

Never knowing,
          it was a mirror that he saw.