Soul Tracks III: A Life-Long Anthology of Personal Poems

By Thomas Lee Mitchell

Soul Tracks III is a collection of nearly 90 poems penned over lifetime of living and loving. Amusing, insightful, heart-wrenching, and brilliant, these reflections will surprise you with their depth of thought and feeling, and a few will leave you sighing and smiling. The author embraces a remarkable range of subjects from being a chocoholic to observing man’s litter to appearing yet again in traffic school to ruminating on the difficulty of listening and to mourning the death of a friend. Soul Tracks III is to be savored either over time or consumed in one sitting. It draws readers in and holds them captive from one awe-inspiring verse to the next. Enjoy.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 15, 2020
• ISBN: 9781796082982

Thomas Lee Mitchell

Tom Mitchell holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Northeastern University and a Master in Liberal Arts from the University of Chicago. In addition to Soul Tracks III, his previous writings include a personal memoire, New England Son, and earlier editions of Soul Tracks I and II. Mitchell has been involved in the information technology industry essentially since its inception and served as founder and chief technologist of a global IT services firm. He resides in Chicago with his wife Rosemarie. They have four children and nine grandchildren.

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Copyright © 2020 by Thomas Lee Mitchell.

ISBN:                  Hardcover                        978-1-7960-8299-9

                            Softcover                           978-1-7960-8300-2

                            eBook                                978-1-7960-8298-2

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: 01/15/2020

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To Rosemarie, my wife, my lover, my life

Contents

Apple Harvest

Babci’s Chicken Soup

Bad Things

Bevington’s Class

Bring Back Nature

Bunk Beds

Business Concepts

Busy People

Cars and Cards

Childhood Memories

Choco-Rehab

Choices

Clouds Are Not Monotonous

Cocktail Party

Contemplations

Conversations

Down East After Labor Day

Eight-Hour Traffic School

Employees Only

Explorers

First Snow Storm

Forsaken

Girl Friend

Golf and Me

Grandchildren

Happiness

Heart Check

Hello Time

Homer’s Iliad

I Am

I Deserve More Money

I Thought I Was Alone

Il Papa

Is My Heart Slipping?

It’s Cool

It’s Not My Fault

Jogger

Key Employee Lost

Listening 101

Maine Changes

Maine Does Not Change

Man’s Litter

Master’s

Meanderings

Mike

Mitchell Island

Mixed Emotions and Contradictions

Moderation

Morning Commute

Mother’s Hooked Rug

Mountain Desert

My Diet

My Mate

My Red Wagon

No Borders

Ohio State Versus Michigan

Opposites

Poker

Raspberry Sherbet

Remodeling

Renoir’s Two Sisters On the Terrace

Return to Maine

Romp in the Woods

Safety First

Self Portrait

Show Me a Sign

Sleep Binds Us

Sticker Shock

Summer Rain

The Bonus Years

The Death of a Friend

The Lost Sale

The Next Phase

The Night Descends

The Pontiac

The Tom Trilogy

Time – Random Thoughts

Truth

Turks and Caicos

Value

We Are Thine, Our Skibo Lassies, O-

What Makes a Friend?

What’s Next?

Why?

Will You be My Valentine?

Winter Days

Winter Run

With the Help of God

Apple Harvest

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Valley sown apple trees crooked and spent

Bearing heavy red bulbs clutched on elastic limbs

Dusting the grass around gnarled trunks bent

From forces that have been

The morning winds whisper through

Harvesting fruit that plops, then bumps along

Excited bees smack wings and lips

Swarming hysterically around sweet aromas

Oozing from split skins

On display below the shredded canopy

Is nature’s compote of sun baked fruit,

Fermented sauce, rain washed cider,

Frosted slices, spread upon bent green

Pungent rusty red deflated sacks nestle

At wrinkled feet, waiting for winter’s slumber

To awake again to pedal that cycle

Of life, death, life, death

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Babci’s Chicken Soup

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Winter Sunday dinner in Babci’s kitchen

Hot soup with a long carrot swimming in the middle

This chicken, once alive, was invisible then

The only sign of its past

Were greasy bubbles floating fast

As we all slurped and bowed like rabbis in a prayerful chant

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Bad Things

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Bad things make more interesting headlines

A wealthy divorce, enormous fines

Fallen heroes elevate our esteem

Power brokers lose their gleam

Good news is difficult to accept

Original sin is our precept

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Bevington’s Class

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Shakespeare, Marlow, Donne and More

Bevington raises, praises till backsides sore

Molded and bent to new thoughts we keep

Stimulation and commute delay our sleep

Good and evil renaissance explored

Attentive students never bored

David is the benevolent king of this domain

Available to critique or assist the lame

Homework becomes essays of uncertainty

Fearing of grades A B or C

Lawyers, teachers, writers, pilots

Many walks, one journey on Thursday night

Close reading, interpret, and claim

Take home tools for profit and fame

Our heads are dipped in the fountain of youth

Knowledge is forever the flower of truth

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Bring Back Nature

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Insulated from our natural world

By combustion machines, ambient lights and belching speakers

I wish to hear a child’s laugh, a cat’s purr, a wind’s whistle

A cow chewing its cud, a dove’s coo

Water flow and snowflakes fall

To gaze at stars along a moonlit road

Feel the morning dew on my bare feet

And listen to the night sleep and new day awake

Sanitized from unwanted noise, fumes, and