My husband and I live in Camden, Maine, with our two nice little Bichons and one bad little Yorkie. Living on a lake, surrounded with trees and flowers is conducive to making poems, and I write every day. I'm living the last quarter of my life now and, surprisingly, finding it the best.
I started school at Hunter Model School and when it burned down, I went for one great year to Horace Mann, a lovely progressive school where the fourth grade was spent in doing exactly what I felt like doing, mainly, writing stories. My father, unfortunately, was of the opinion that if a child liked school, it couldn't be any good. So off I went to Convent of the Sacred Heart which I disliked enough to satisfy him, and from there it was Cathedral High School and Rosemont College. Perhaps he was right because much of what goes into my poetry comes from those years at the Convent.
Prisms
I grab at confidence, my hands
are slick with sweat and so I fail,
identity eludes my grasp,
the ocean won't fit in my pail.
Fear doesn't creep on small cat's feet
like fog, it's more prone to attack,
like a scourge or inquisition
fear becomes the spirit's rack.
Then my mind closes, and my
ears to sound, my eyes to sight,
I know that old fear once again
has come to turn day into night.
The battle has been fought before
and sometimes won, but in the end,
it always steals back, and this time
I fear I must make fear my friend.
For what is friendship but the deed
of giving love and loyalty,
so darkness transmutes into light,
what else is love's priority?
But how can I embrace my pain
and understand that paradox,
can I perceive those inner doors
and make a metaphor of locks?
Every child turns toward the breast
I wish my instinct was as clear,
I'd live right in the here and now,
and turn, unguarded toward next year.
I try to reason, not to look at life
through prisms, for to me
the light is convoluted, so
the more I look, the less I see.
It's necessary to concede,
impossible to separate
the intermingling of those four
of joy and pain and love and hate.
I speculate that fear's about
protection and security,
could it be I glimpse the dawn,
that at last it occurs to me,
the only way to break the grip
of all fear and uncertainty
is knowing that to be secure,
I must trust insecurity.
And with this tangible relief
my path can go where it will go,
no need to dread anxiety,
no need to fear what I don't know.
The past is past, whatever comes
is circular, and at a glance
the only thing to which to cling,
is unreality and chance.
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Pebbles in a Pond
I take my boat out on my lake
for quiet, when I'm on the brink,
and as I look back at the wake
the churning water make me think
of stones tossed in a smaller lake,
perhaps a pond, I don't know when
or where I tossed those pebbles in,
and why I got the feeling then
if ripples were like thoughts, I'd know
just how they grew, and then I'd see
not just some scientific fact,
but luminous fluidity
with thoughts as echoes of ideas
without which there would never be
the change from small subjective to
the large of objectivity.
I throw some crumbs into my lake
to watch the fish come up and bite,
there never is enough, like children
over sweets, they shove and fight.
Again, I think those fish are like
ideas that tumble through my mind,
there's never room enough for
all of them, and there are times I find
that there's a lake inside my head,
some places deep and others shallow,
some pure and clean, some filled with muck
where some thoughts bloom and some lie fallow.
And when a storm disturbs the calm
of lake and mind, fish and ideas
take refuge so far down I hope
they can't be snared, but I have fears
that fishermen with tempting lures
will net them all and tell their tales
of fish they caught and thoughts they thought
that grow until they're big as whales.
They never seem to realize, nor
give to anyone, a sign,
that all those fish they call their own
are not from their lake, but from mine.
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Redemption
A half remembered poem, a dream
a scent, a touch, a careless style,
a memory now here, now gone,
elusive as an infant's smile.
Was there caprice, a transient glow
that brought me joy, or was it grief?
Through shadowed paths of time I search,
illusion mocks me, time's a thief.
My eyes have paled to emptiness
this wintry vista never planned,
my soundless song no longer sung,
my footprints leave no mark on sand.
How tenuous my days, so thin
that I could slip through falling rain
and stay untouched by any drop
of fearful joy or daunting pain.
Yet something magic once filled me
and dim remembrance clouds the fear
of dissipating into mist
with no one knowing I was here.
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Backward Glances
I wander backward through my mind
to look for treasure, and I find
just shadows lurking all about
the growing mountain of my doubt
that searching will make age concede
to tangled thoughts and crushing need.
How gratifying it would be
to thumb my nose at certainty
and find those minute misplaced cells
wherein lost information dwells
instead of wild lamenting on
the times, the names. the dates, all gone.
I hope in my next life to know
that in whatever form I grow
I'll not recall a single tear,
not even childhood's smallest fear,
but only feel the fever of
whatever laughter, fun and love
will help alleviate the pain
of stumbling through a life again.
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Questionnaire (circa 2000)
Am I the thinker or the thought,
Am I for sale, can I be bought?
Am I authentic or beguiled,
can charity be undefiled?
Can I buy friendship, is it free,
does anyone belong to me?
Am I aloft or on the ground,
I think I'm lost, can I be found?
Is time my weapon or my bane,
will innocence be mine again?
Am I the sun in someone's sky
or just a speck in someone's eye?
Have I been weak, could I be strong,
if might makes right, then what makes wrong?
Is evil freedom, or is good
and is the difference understood?
Am I the sickness or the cure,
are good intentions ever pure?
Dif I fly up, must I sink down
because of someone's smile or frown?
Am I unique, am I a blend,
do I know real from just pretend?
Is my path straight or will I stray,
can any signpost show the way?
Am I a flower or a weed
and will I bloom or go to seed?
Do I know truth, or are my lies
the only truth I recognize?
Can theses I can't prove be solved,
will anyone become involved?
Could questions asked just sometimes be
responded to with certainty?
Is love as risky as cocaine
can't I have joy unmixed with pain?
Are movies real, is safe sex fun,
don't want to stay, but where to run?
Could this whole questionnaire be met
by logging on the Internet?
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(Copyright 2002 - All Rights Reserved by Pat Regensburg - No reproduction without express permission from the author)Letter to the Author: Pat Regensburg at aregens@aol.com