Lonesome Love

By Eric Jan Larsen

Positively preoccupied with character, Eric Jan Larsen's Lonesome Love offers a collection of poems that touch upon the South, the Civil War, race and equality, family history, and the pandemic to explore what now seems like long forgotten virtues: integrity, dignity, empathy and compassion. Expanding on subjects expressed in earlier poems, the author has composed verse that speaks to contemporary and traditional issues such as the environment, political division, American values, and the virtues found in our struggles and triumphs living with ourselves and others. In the end, the poems subtly suggest that character, no matter how far away, eventually comes to everyone and that we must learn to adjust to misfortune as well as the joy in life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Jun 7, 2021
• ISBN: 9781098361747

Eric Jan Larsen

With his ancestry going back to Scandanavia, England and Germany, and his education encompassing the study of English, Folklore and Education, Eric Jan Larsen writes autobiographical poems that explore family relationships, tradititon, faith and love. Calling on past experiences as a youth as well as an adult, he is particularly interested in telling his life story through the lens of a father, husband and older spiritual adult. Growing up in the urban environment of Philadelphia but living for years afterwards in small Northern and Southern towns, he is a grateful for both experiences and the perspectives they provide on race, religion, family and politics. Married for over thirty years, and the proud parent of two children, he lives with his wife in a small coastal community in North Florida that he still calls “the shore.”

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Copyright 2021 © Eric Jan Larsen

Lonesome Love

Soft-Cover ISBN: 978-1-09836-173-0

eBook ISBN: 978-1-09836-174-7

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Contents

I Was a Father

Vanity

Gone South

Deepwater

Good Works

I Can’t Breathe

Missy’s Song

Alas, Alacrity

Better Man Inside

Bringing It All Back Home

Climate Change

First Lady, First Lady

Definitely Desire

Life’s Lessons

Love Is

My Father’s Voice

Nostalgia

On The Porch

School Spirit

Silence

Stone in the Shape of a Heart

Soft Kisses

The Master of Rhythm and Rhyme

The Inner Voice

The Water is a Risin

Oh, Jefe

To Assuage

What’s Not Yet Clear

The Humblebrag

The Usual Suspects

The Cat Caper

Bedraggled

In My Time of Dying

The Colors of our Rainbow

Last Lament

I Was a Father

They say water under the bridge never returns

But I wonder about that

I remember as children one of you dropping a ball over the edge on one side of a bridge and then both of you running to the other side to watch it rush past in the water below

And you asked,

Daddy, where does the water go?

And I pointed downstream

"You see where the water meets the sky?

It flows up to Heaven"

And both of you stared at the horizon in awe

I was a father

A lot of water has passed under the bridge since we first held each other

In our creation story

You arrived with tears of joy after a long voyage from the headwaters

At first in the murky dark, then bathed in the light of life

The special water nourished you, comforted you as you finished the first part of your journey

I was a father

Later in our pilgrimage, we were together again on a bridge

We were in the woods, walking to a waterfall

And as we approached we could hear the water rushing down

One of you asked if the water was falling back down to earth from Heaven

I remember thinking how enduring our childhood memories are, how they affect the way we understand our lives

Just for a moment, I was back in time with you, exploring the secrets of life

You were our boys, bestowed by the grace of God

You were an image in my likeness

But I had to learn how you saw the circle of life

That was so different than what I’d known as a child

Looking in the mirror

I could only see myself and what was behind

It was never enough to know only what you knew

I had to discover how you thought

Your lives bestowed an awareness that truly enriched our time together

The man on the cross was common ground

I was a father

Now time is rushing away like the water under the bridge

So much has happened since the special water first brought you to us

I’ll lie down again tonight

The clouds still streaming by as if it’s daylight

But my experience, my feelings won’t change

And now that I’ve opened my eyes again

I know I’m better for having known you

You were a higher love

I’m still at the shore

The water of life in front of me

My shadow pointing East

The sun behind us now

But each day is a new awakening

I too crossed over to the other