When the Muses Came to Call: Sometimes, I Answered Their Knocking.

By Donald E. Smith

This book is a very personal collection of poems and other writings that were written over a period of more than fifty years. They were written at times of strong emotional feelings about love, death, triumphs, tragedies and , even, the most mundane of life's events.It took fifty years for the author to gain the insight , the perspective and the courage to reveal his feelings for all to see. He hopes that the readers will see and recognizesome of the emotion that plays such a big role in the lives of all of us.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Apr 24, 2009
• ISBN: 9781496945419

Donald E. Smith

Don Smith is a retired high school principal, superintendent and university instructor. He holds BA, MA and Ph.D degrees. Since 1970, he has traveled to 52 countries as a teacher, tour leader, photographer, educational consultant, voyeur and wide-eyed tourist. He volunteers at local nursing homes, helps to train medical students and sings in his church choir. He lives in Mogadore, Ohio with his wife, Joy, and attack-cat, Lily. He and his wife have have two children, Michael and Kathy, five grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

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© 2009 Donald E. Smith. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 4/15/2009

ISBN: 978-1-4389-4860-7 (sc)

           978-1-4969-4541-9 (e)

Bloomington, Indiana

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Contents

Preface

Dedication

About The Author

Credits

Some Words That Have Guided Me

When The Muses Came To Call

Growing Up and Family Memories

Filtering

Withering Looks

Things I Remember

While Walking One Night

The Taste of Salt

My Hands

First Born

Second Chance

Raison D’Etre

Something Wonderful

Per Diem

My Sister

Pizzer

That’s Life!!

Dust

Fractured Minds

Teacher

Of Men and Mice

Diversity

The Beast Within

Pacifier

Lessenings

Free Verse with a Variation of Stream-of-Consciousness

Channeling

Life Is a Pu-Pu Platter

Paradigms

Grammar Ain’t No Fun

Dr. Seuss And I

Legacies

My Unlikely Heroes

Faerie Flowers

If I Could But Soar Again

Lily

Topsail Island

The Analyst

Justification

Flowers in the Fall

Snow

On Meeting a Dog Late at Night

Catalyst

A Plea For Understatement

The Un-Selfsufficient Man

Virility

The Bluebird’s Song

Winter

Better Late Than Never

Recapitulation

Love

The Last Waltz

Of Sands and Tents and Arab Things

Paean For Dark Eyes

A Longing Comes Each Autumn

The Half-Way Lover

Projection

The Years Best Forgotten

Time Travelers

The Marital Bed

A Belated Love Poem

Travel

Night Thoughts In Foreign Places

Constant Needing

Those Far-Away Places

On Questing

Faith, Religion, Death and Dying

It’s Showtime, God!

Storm Warning

Before I Embark

Rendezvous

Narcolepsy

If I Could Make a God

Girl In The Church Balcony

Requiem

October Sun

Two Thoughts

The Song of the Loon

Neoma

In Remembrance of Bill Clark- A Tribute to His Love of Golf

Walter

Fellow Traveler

I Can Only Imagine

Four Prose Pieces

Reminiscing While Working at Goodyear

By The Lake

Going Home

Down on the Delta

PREFACE

Each one of us, I suppose, at some time in his life feels as though he could write something of value. Most of us, however, pass it off as an adolescent fancy much like those feelings of immortality that we all experience while growing up.

Just as we come to realize the foolishness of chasing immortality, we, also, put aside the idea of being undiscovered writers.

My problem is that I’ve never abandoned completely this idea.

Wistfully, I cling still to this romantic goal hoping that, someday, I’ll write something that has real meaning.

Maybe, just maybe, that someday has come.

The poems that follow were written as a sort of emotional catharsis. Isn’t that what poetry is, a release at times of crisis or elation?

Many of the poems are about real events in my life, but others are based on imagined feelings, ideas and scenarios. Throughout my life I’ve had a strong imagination that has allowed me to live part of my life in another dimension not only in this one-dimensional milieu. Even that word, Milieu, is from another life -the French court.

I’ve found that writing those strong feelings and emotions , the actual mechanical act of committing those thoughts to paper, has helped me to analyze what was only in my mind.

Somehow, it has been easier for me to think more clearly when I line up my disorganized army of words on paper. Usually, they march in great disarray through my mind with no regard for order or rank of importance.

Most of the following poems were written in afore-mentioned moments of intense feeling. Some, however, were just written. If times weighed heavily, I wrote a poem. Some were just sophomoric attempts at humor. In retrospect, I should have put them into the circular file. But, all of them were and are part of me.

What I fear the most is that they will reveal myself nakedly before unsympathetic and judgmental eyes. I’ve tried to make the poems accessible to the average reader, many of whom have had a school-boys’ aversion to poetry because of the usage of archaic terms and effete, flowery language. To many people, poetry is only for Sissies. So, I’ve made liberal use of the vernacular and paid only lip service to rhyme and meter. This is my way of saying, Read the thoughts and emotions, not the technical structure. You will not be able to count the syllables and come up with any of the classical styles of poetry. If this offends the purists, so be it. I’ve included a few other types of writing that, in prose rather than in verse, try to explain my inner feelings and emotions.

As I review what I’ve written over these many years, I do so in amazement and wonder. Did I really write that? If I did, why? It’s as if I step outside of myself and look at some alien creature.

I think that I had the temerity to write this book in order to explain some of the vagaries and unexplainable facets of my life. But, who can explain one’s life? I