Bittersweet

By Florence Young

It is a collection of poems and short essays intended to inform or encourage young women, although not limited to that age

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Apr 26, 2021
• ISBN: 9781663221315

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Copyright © 2021 Florence Young.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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ISBN: 978-1-6632-2130-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6632-2131-5 (e)

iUniverse rev. date:  04/24/2021

CONTENTS

Bittersweet

The Journey

Dream Castles

Visions

Phoenix

Walking Backwards

Farewell to Yesterday

Today

Tomorrow’s Yesterday

Bumps in the Road

Not on this Earth

I will never be that Old

Political Science

Night Watch

The Who

The Management

Waste Not—Want Not

My Guardian

Perfect Peace

Booby Trap

Make Your Own Decision

Belief

Take Care of Your Checking Account

A Box of Crayons

Wisdom at its Peak

Dangerous Sundown

Perception Limits Reality

Scammed!

He will Never Leave You

Solitude

Acceptable Worship

Peace Beyond Understanding

A Different Drum

The Search

Values—Yours or Borrowed

Broken Trust

Relationships

All Those Pretty Things

Get Up and Get Going

Driftwood

Ready? Set? Wait

Time Bomb

The Affair

Custody

My Plea

When Forgiving Becomes Enabling

My Self Untouched

When You Come to the End of the Day

Disconnected

Road Closed

What God Cannot Do

No Return to Where You Were

For What You Can Become

Torn Asunder

Love One Another

Your Shelter, My Prison

The Prisoner

Married

Red Roses

The Meeting

Unequally Yoked

The Wasteland of Indifference

Square Pegs in Square Holes

On Being a Mother

Exclusion

Heart Cry

What Goes Around Comes Around

The Long Good-Bye

Tears

You Can Take it with You

Grief, The Healer

The Healing

September 11, 2001

Prisoner of War

Victim Suit

Counterweight

Victim Suit

The Brass Ring

Looking for Fair

Friends

Friendship

Finis

My Friend, the Enemy

The Aristocracy

Politician

Why Believe in God?

Who Are You, God?

Come to Me

A Firm Foundation

God Knows Who I Am

In the Beginning God

My God and I

Vacancy

Psalm 139:13-18

Perfect Gifts

Deliver Us From Evil

Unfinished

Where Do I Go From Here?

Always

A Reason to get Up in the Morning

God’s Grace

Accept God’s Forgiveness

The Traveler

Freedom in the Negative

Come to Me

You Are Here

Resistance

BITTERSWEET

Life

You were once my lover

passionate

full of promise

You spoke of a fabulous forever

Come go with me

you said

We will dance the years away together

Passion cooled

Come then you said

Be my friend

Hand in hand we will walk the pleasant years away

Life

My erstwhile lover

My sometime friend

Your promises were ropes of sand

White hot passion denied reality

Warm companionship belied actuality

Not a whisper you gave

of grief

of tears

of shattered dreams

The dancing ended

The walk slowed to a trudge

But I would not turn you away

Your quiet whisper speaks

of lessons learned

of wisdom gained

of time now

To begin the business of living

Life

I bear you no grudge

for empty expectations

for unfulfilled anticipation

We will finish the years together in quiet joy

Until that last goodnight

THE JOURNEY

Seems I’m always swimming upstream

While those

the drifters in placid waters

Dawdle peacefully

seeming to feel no pain

What is so exciting upstream

worthy of the struggle

Will I know when I have arrived

Will I find what I think I am seeking

upstream

So I continue on my journey

asking

never answering

Afraid perhaps

to learn of empty exertion

But fearing more the loss

of never having begun

DREAM CASTLES

D REAMS COME IN ALL SHAPES and sizes, but they are your dreams. Build your own dream castles and rely on no one else for your visions of the future. Dream castles are not duplexes.

Langston Hughes said it: Hold fast to dreams for if dreams die life is a broken winged bird that cannot fly.

The young have wonderful dreams of the future, of being able to work in an exciting profession as they perform great and wonderful things for the benefit of mankind. As the years go by life delivers some disappointments. Perhaps there is no viable chance for the realization of your dream, but life holds many surprises.

An accident can end your dream. In that case grieve for what can never be. Then find a new dream for the new life that has been handed to you.

For many college graduation is the realization of their dream. But time and unexpected events can put a finish to that dream. If that is still your dream put forth every effort to make it come true. One class at a time can move you forward. Slowly, but at least you are working on your dream. College credits do not lose their value and can often be transferred to another college. Even after a long dropout it is possible to pick up where you left off and fulfill your dream.

Dream castles add sparkle to life. But if your dreams are obviously without a whisper of the possibilities of fulfillment do not be afraid to shift to other dreams.

Dream castles, filled with your very own dreams, lift you above the ho-hum of simply following your feet around. An exciting what if can help to change your outlook on life from bitter to sweet.

A young college professor truly enjoyed his teaching career, but circumstances destroyed that dream castle. His marriage dissolved. He found joy in directing stage productions for high school students. Years brought an end to that pleasant interlude.

He remarried, happily—or so he believed. They relocated for her benefit where he managed her well-paid business in counseling troubled young people. With no warning she left him to marry someone else leaving him with no house and little income from part-time work at a local college.

Too many disappointments and the death of too many dreams threatened to destroy him. Hopefully, he rebuilt an old dream castle and began to write. To his surprise and delight royalty checks augmented his income. Approaching the elder years of his life he continues to write.

Dream castles can vanish into thin air. Life threatens to become a wasteland of abandoned or destroyed dream castles. Find another dream if it is no more than what you would do if you won the lottery. Find a cause that can use your help and build your new dream castle on that foundation. There is no shortage of dreams.

VISIONS

Unfulfilled desires

Shattered expectations

Something within me dies

every time I whisper farewell

to another broken dream

How many dreams can die

How many parts of me

discarded with each shattered hope

Can renew themselves

In yet another possibility

Tantalized

I cling

To one more

and then once more

Brain creation

Always a prisoner of hope

PHOENIX

I stood weeping

amid shattered hopes

These my broken dreams

shards and fragments

Of unrealized expectations

And unfulfilled anticipations

Then I stooped and carefully placed

One jagged shard against another

and then another

and another

A pattern heretofore unseen

Emerged

In unexpected beauty

I wonder at my weeping

Scarce recalling now

Those distant dying dreams

WALKING BACKWARDS

T HE PAST CREATES A PRISON for those who live there. As surely as iron bars imprison the lawbreaker the past holds those who refuse to let it go.

The