The Problem of God and Other Poems

By Paul Leary

The poems contained in this volume are the fruit of a lifetime spent reading and writing poetry. Taken as a whole, these poems are a window into the heart and mind of the man who wrote them. They are offered to the reader as a bouquet of flowers, the kind of flowers one might find growing amid the ashes and cinders on the side of an old railroad track and tied up with string. If there is a unifying theme to be found in these poems, it is faith. It is not simply a belief in a supreme being, though that too can be found here, but faith in ourselves. It is a belief that if, during the dark times, we can keep faith with the divine fire, the life force that burns within us, we will emerge triumphant. The author hopes that his readers will find that faith written into his poems and, more importantly, in themselves.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 14, 2018
• ISBN: 9781984565228

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Copyright © 2018 by Paul Leary.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2018913403

ISBN:     Hardcover       978-1-9845-6524-2

               Softcover          978-1-9845-6523-5

               eBook               978-1-9845-6522-8

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 11/13/2018

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CONTENTS

Dedication

Acknowledgement

PART 1

Friendship

About Nothing

It’s About Time

A Witch’s Brew

Buckaroo

Comrades

A Passing Fancy

Jim Crow

On Finding One of My Poems Half Eaten

Old Friends

An Autumn Song

A Promise

Looking the Elephant in the Eye

To a Wild Swan

Sadie Hawkins Day

The Problem of God

Little Girl Blue

A Sandcastle

America Is

Armistice Day

Apple Blossom Time

The Great Debate

The Ballad of Hampton

Aftermath

The Rose Tattoo

To Rachael on Her Twenty-Fourth Birthday

Proverbs XXXI

A Seagull

The Wheel of Return

To Those Still Gripped by Winter

Our Game

The Antelope

Awakening

Memorial Day

To a Cabbage

Encounter

A Street Thing

Butterflies

Indian Summer

Marooned

Plum Island Light

The Orb Weaver

Rainbows

November Song

A Trial for Life

The Wildflower and the Bee

The Well of Sorrow

My Testament

In Flight

The Firebird

The Shamrock and the Rose

A Moment in Time

Coast Guard Beach

The Last Rose of Summer

PART 2

With Fire and Sword

Prologue

Into the Wilderness

The Brawl

Interlude

Day Two

Spotsylvania

Along the North Anna

Cold Harbor

The Enemy at the Gate

Petersburg

Stalemate

The Confederacy

The Crater

Postscript

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my father with thanks for passing on his gift to me.

Acknowledgement

The author would like to thank Christopher Sinecola, Jessica Walker and Ally Scott for the invaluable contributions each of them made in helping bring this book to life.

PART 1

Friendship

I give thee now this gift of flowers

still wet with morning dew,

plucked were they within the hour,

especially for you.

As these flowers are bound with twine,

our hearts as well are tied.

With bonds of love, we are entwined,

and in love, together shall we abide.

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About Nothing

Long had I sat and pondered,

Thinking of if nothing at all,

And as I sat, I wondered

About the meaning of nothing at all.

Nothing is the absence of something

On that we can all agree.

Anything makes something of nothing

Even a ball afloat on the sea.

So nothing is a state that isn’t;

It’s not a thing, a number, or place.

Like a hole in the heart of a doughnut,

It’s an area of empty space.

Yet we think of that nothing as something.

Don’t we call it a doughnut hole?

It’s just space surrounded by doughnut;

You have to fill it to make it whole.

But look through the hole in that doughnut

And see how far you can see.

You’ll see that the hole in the doughnut

Stretches out to infinity.

Infinity we know is boundless; it has no beginning or end.

It will take an awful lot of doughnut

To fill up that hole, my friend.

Though we try to grasp or complete it,

Infinity will always remain a riddle.

So as for the doughnut, just eat it

And don’t worry about the hole in the middle.

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It’s About Time

For centuries now it’s been debated

By philosophers and such

Whether time exists or was created

By man as a kind of crutch

On which he leans as he tries to find

A way to organize his life

And ease his troubled mind.

To some of us, time is constant,

An idea that can’t be touched

Sometimes we have too little;

Sometimes we have too much.

It slips right through our fingers

Like so many grains of sand.

In memory alone it lingers

As it rushes through our hands.

To some of us, time’s a river;

To others, it’s a sea.

To some of us, time is money;

To others, time is free.

Either it passes all too quickly,

Or it drags on endlessly.

We either try to make the most of it

Or waste it carelessly.

Time is something that is measured

By calendars and clocks,

By counting rings on trees and things

Or splitting open rocks.

We peer into the universe

To study the drift of stars,

To see if time works out there

The same as where we are.

Time is something that we try to make

And something that we spend.

It may, in fact, wrap around itself

and start all over again.

Amid all of this confusion

There is one thing that I forgot:

The time we have this moment

Is all the time we’ve got.

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A Witch’s Brew

As I traveled on the road of life,

One dark and windy day,

I stopped to talk to a blond-haired girl

That I met along the way.

When I asked what she was doing,

She looked me clear on through,

"I’m mixing up a potion,

I