A Life’s Worth: Collected Poems

By Stan Cosby

Just as reading begins for most of us with Nursery Rhymes, so writing for many of us begins with poetry. Maybe journaling our thoughts. Or writing bits of it in love letters. Composing funny limericks. Sappy valentines. Facebook memes.
That was certainly the case for pastor and author, Stan Cosby. Though Pastor Cosby has written a great deal of other kinds of literature—history, fiction, short stories, theological treatise, essay—there will always be a love in his heart for poetry, for in his words “it was the music of the bard that first cast the spell of language upon me.”
A LIFE’S WORTH is a collection of Cosby’s poems written over a 55-year period of life, from adolescence to senior adulthood. All types of poetry are represented, on all kinds of subjects. Poems about Christ, his birth, his life, his death and resurrection. Poems about following Christ. Poems about Africa and Ireland. Poems about the Old West, Cowboys and Indians. Poems about the Land, about Nature, and about Days Gone By. And, of course, poems about Love. Through it all, the spell of a Word-Weaver! Beware!

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Sep 2, 2021
• ISBN: 9781665534901

Stan Cosby

Stan Cosby is truly a son of the “High Lonesome.” Born in Canyon, Texas raised in Amarillo, Texas, the capital of the High Plains, he is a Pastor by vocation and thus, a writer and a story-teller by calling. Sermons, poems, essays, short stories, theological treatises, family histories – he has written them all. Pastor Cosby (or Pastor Papa as his grandkids call him) lives with his wife Susan on the “Old Home Place,” a Centennial Farm of his wife’s family near Hedley, Texas. HIGH LONESOME is his fourth book to be published.

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© 2021 Stan Cosby. 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.

Published by AuthorHouse 09/01/2021

ISBN: 978-1-6655-3491-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-3489-5 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6655-3490-1 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021916831

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

A LIFE’S WORTH:

Collected Poems

"My heart overflows with a beautiful theme; my

tongue is the pen of a ready writer." – Psalm 45:1

In a musty old basement, in a down-in-the-mouth farmhouse, I sat on my sister’s bed mesmerized. In my hands I held a large, old leather-bound scrapbook, covered with dust. It was my dad’s scrapbook. Not one he kept, but one kept for him by his mother. Full of old letters, ribbons and bows, birthday cards, valentine hearts, and dozens upon dozens of newspaper clippings. The cards, letters, and ribbons were my dad’s; the newspaper clippings, yellowed and curling at the edges, were poems written by granddad, my dad’s father. In a weekly newspaper column called COSBY’S CORNER my Granddad showcased his poems. The first poem I really remember reading from that scrapbook was a moving piece entitled The Candle’s Out. It was a poem that eulogized his mother who had suffered greatly from rheumatoid arthritis the last years of her life:

It is enough. Let shadows fall,

Let the broken body rest;

Let the eyelids close

And the hands repose

In peace upon the breast!

Relax the form that drooped with pain,

Reward the patient soul

For every cross

And grief and loss

With joys a thousandfold!

It’s finished now, a life of toil

That knew no selfish ends,

But gave the best

And lived, and blessed

Her children and her friends.

The candle’s out – I count my loss –

But light from darkness turns

For God is good

And where it stood

A glowing Halo burns.

That poem, plus the haunting lines from Edgar Allan Poe’s immortal ANNABEL LEE, cast a spell on my heart that I could not shake off.

And neither the angels in heaven above,

Nor the demons down under the sea,

Can ever dissever my soul from the soul

Of the beautiful Annabel Lee.

I wanted to write beautiful poetry like that! It was like a West Texas thunderstorm building up in my soul ready to sweep the earth with mighty thunders and bright flashings and delicious rains leaving the whole world after aglow with life.

And so I began. Simple things, unrhymed phrases. Like every teenager’s diary, thoughts and feelings jotted down or gushed out. But unlike other teenagers, I never stopped writing. I read poetry. Studied poetry. Experimented with poetry. Went through phases. The Haiku phase. The Tanka phase. The Sonnet phase. The Free Verse phase. Hopefully, I have improved in my craft over the years, but without the diminishing of youthful passion. This book is the result of that poetic life. Hence, the title A LIFE’S WORTH.

A LIFE’S WORTH – both a length of time and a measure of value, a value that Jesus implies is eternal. To me, poetry is the mother tongue of the soul. Look at the Psalms, the emotion, the imagery, the cadence, like the sobbing of the sea. No wonder so many people relate emotively to the Psalms.

This collection of poems covers a fifty-four year span, almost five and a half decades. It includes poems from my adolescent and academic years to my most recent reflections of life on the farm. Some poems are free-flowing without rhyme or consistent meter. Others are intentionally framed in rhyme and rhythm, even rigorously so, as in sonnets.

There are five sections in this book representing five different themes that will be explained in an introduction to each:

Nuns Fret Not

These Gathered Oils

Mysterium

Tonight, I Waltz a Southern Breeze

Jesse’s Arroyo

As you read and meditate on these lines, I pray for either a holy collision of your heart with God’s or an illuminating connection between your soul and mine. Could any poet – or preacher for that matter – hope for more?

CONTENTS

Nuns Fret Not

Nuns Fret Not

Why Life Is?

Quest

The Paradoxes Of God

The Shepherd-Lamb

The Serpent-Dove

The Restful Yoke

The Wounded Healer

The Dying Life

In The School Of The Planets

I, Francis

The Carmen Sonnets

These Gathered Oils

These Gathered Oils

De Profundis

The Coming Of Padric

Mary Of Gael

Irish Girl

Star And Sea

True Alchemy

The Ghana Cycle

Mysterium

Mysterium

Dreamworld

Firebird

Eden Reversed

I, Ruth

A Leper Comes

River Baptisms

Declared By Fire

The Cup

The Alabaster Box

Pulpit Bloopers

The