Giving Poetry A Try ~Part 2

 Clyde McCulley

Continued from Part 1

The next day  I was listening to birds singing in the nearby trees.

 The thought hit me whether a blind person hears the birds as we with hearing or are they blessed with a different symphony.

As I thought about this, a new poem started developing and from those thoughts I wrote a poem entitled The Sound of the Sun.

I have continued writing poetry for the last five months and have now published three books of poems. 

I am under no illusion that these make me a poet, but I am enjoying creating in this new medium.

I have joined a couple of writer’s blogs and now have more than 2000 readers, so I am pleased. 

A few days ago, a poem was born that relates to one of my old favorite poets:

Thinking of a Poet 

in a New England village

an old man wandered

the road towards me

thick crop of frosted hair

 thick crop of frosted hair

snowflakes started to fall

 

he shuffled along

looking here

looking there

 

a flight of geese

flew in a perfect V pattern

south

 

he watched them disappear

then walked towards me slowly

a bit confused

 

hello I said

lovely morning

he looked startled

then greeted me

 

where is a fine man like you

traveling on a snowy day

 

he looked at me quizzically

I am not sure

but I will know

when I get there

 

we stood not saying much

then he said “I have miles

to go before I sleep”

 

I said that sounds familiar

he looked at me smiled and said

yes, it should

 

he continued down the road

I quietly followed him

in about a mile he slowed

searching for something

 

soon he came to a

small overgrown lane

slowly he turned

disappearing into the

overgrowth

 

following I turned into

the lane

and came upon

an old cemetery 

the old man had vanished

 

he had found what was beyond

the deep and snowy woods and

the end of the miles

 

now he could sleep

now he could sleep  

Many of the poems I have composed come from events, both real and imagined relating to my youth.

 I am not a seasoned writer, nor a poet, but I do recommend that writers with more experience in the art, give poetry a try. They might fascinate themselves as well, as this old artist/writer/poet has.

Clyde McCulley was born in Benton, Arkansas in 1941, the last of six kids born to a father, sixty years old, and a mother of forty. Together, they tried to eke out a living on a five-acre farm with no running water and a two-holer outhouse.
He was determined to go to college and pursue fine art, ultimately leading him to complete both an MFA and a doctorate in Higher Education Administration. 
After working as a professor of art at several private colleges, McCulley spent twenty years as the director of the School of Art at Munson Williams Proctor Arts Institute.
McCulley's memoirs, "The Boy on Shady Grove Road," is a collection of 100 stories from his early years in the conservative segregated South of the 1940s and 50s.
His book captures life on a little farm that was financially poor but rich in love, adventure, and imagination.
Along with humor that makes many readers laugh out loud are the tender, charming, and even poetic musings of a man who recalls childhood with uncommon vividness.
His characters and schemes in "The Boy on Shady Grove Road" bring back memories, to many readers, of Mark Twain's "Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn."

 

McCulley has written a series of books for Middle Graders, “Panther Creek Mountain” adventures of three kids growing up as poor kids in the Appalachian Mountains during the 1950s.

 

Recently he has written three books of Poems.

McCulley lives with his wife, Susan, and their cat, Shadow, in Portland, Maine.

www.clydemcculley.com