When I posted on this blog a letter I had written to the Professor of Theology and Philosophy in 1991, I mentioned Robert Nozick’s book called The Examined Life (published in 1989) and the possibility that we might be in the creation business as apprentices.  I recalled a conversation I had with our son David  who was a lawyer with a Philosophy major who also spoke of creating worlds which was new to me.   That took place long before David’s death in 1985.   Recently I found this poem written in 1988.

There Is A Place

There is a place and time
hanging to the east of conscience,
lolling in the fullness of space
that I watch and hunger for.
It thrives on my thought
being a world I created and rolled into Being.
It belies my judgment, proving itself real.

I’ve worked till dark and used the moon
to guide the plow through memories
meshed in tangled emotions.
I’ve cleared the land allowing new growth
to firmly root and be nurtured
by sun held too long beneath
grey clouds, heavy.

I did not know to do it
except my need to begin.   Anywhere.
And anywhere was a lot of places.
I was a good place to begin
so I began to plow,
through memories giving rise to emotions,
giving rise to pain.   Again.

To have left them buried beneath
a facade of civility was courting
volcanic eruption in babies still to be born.
I knew that but didn’t know I knew it.
I plowed till dark and through the night
and by the light of the half moon
plowed some more.
The night grew weary of me.

And now I sleep.   The babies play
and in their play create worlds again
on firm ground, growing grass without weeds,
digging foundations in loam
and not building mountains on garbage.
I’ve given them what I knew to be best
of what I am.  No need for them to fulfill
my dreams for I’ve dreamed them

and the new world waits.

February 4, 1988