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| (Image from Rainbow Light Foundation) |
Dear Brother
Please recognize my prayer,
Dear Brother,
charred black as knowledge
onto this oblivious white.
For, someone
as thoughtful
as umber (though, passionate
with auburn, like her hair
in April light)
needs to understand that
I love her so.
But the thermostat in my soul,
Dear Brother,
is much like the fire
which men think they own.
Quickly as sunsets pass you by,
Dear Brother,
the reassuring sunlight fills me,
but the fearful midnight
then swells;
and—yet—I appear as indifferent
as the twilight.
I beseech you,
Dear Brother,
to please let her know
that the flowers
blooming from me
come from the loving
that she sows.
-Paul Whiting
(a.k.a., Small All White in the Forest)
"I am no barrier to its sun; the light and I are as one!"
My Poetic Notes:
The reason that I wrote this poem can be summed up with the following statement: It's kind of difficult to talk about this poem because of what I was going through at the time that I wrote it. I was fighting with Sandra—who was my first and only girlfriend—mostly because of me, and I penned this poem, literally overnight, explain to her why I was so very difficult to "read" emotionally.
And I used a metaphor about praying to Jesus ("Dear Brother") in order to explain to Sandra how I thought and felt. Looking back now, I realize that the qualities about myself which I was describing could be thought of as "bipolar." And in the phrase, "I appear as indifferent as the twilight," I was trying to describe the way I usually dealt with the emotional rollercoaster upon which I very often found myself riding! Anyway, I was really just trying to convey to Sandra why I was usually so "totally unemotional" on the outside: it's because I was usually so "totally emotional" on the inside and was trying to maintain a "socially acceptable decorum" at all times!
And this poem was also published on my "Paul Whiting — A Creative Writer" blog (please see the hyperlink below for the blog), since I feel that the message in this poem applies to the message that I am trying to convey through "Paul Whiting — A Creative Writer."
This poem was written in Salt Lake City, Utah.
-Paulee
https://paulwhitingwriting.blogspot.com
This "Small All White in the Forest" Post No. 017 was edited on September 5th, 2023.
"Poetry is using the fewest words possible in order to describe all that is possible to describe." –Paul Whiting [June 1st, 2022]
