Forum Member Poetry to Illuminate Epicurean Philosophy

Bearing the Weight

The axe and maul are heavier,
and splitting a harder chore –
but winter will hardly wait.

Muscle-ache, and stinging sweat
pouring from open pores,
mock me for my aging state.

Chilling air keeps me at my task
as gray light grows darker,
until I am cloaked in slate –

reminded as I limp away,
that I will never again
walk with an even gait.

That is the fate of years,
and not to be mourned –
just the way that I bear the weight.

~ ~ ~

I originally posted this poem on my Wall here. It was published in a book of my (then collected) poems some years ago.

What it reminds me of now is the pleasure/pain tradeoff. I took great pleasure in splitting and stacking several cords of wood each year for the winter fires – though it always became physically painful. I do walk with a slight limp (and have for decades) from an old factory injury: “not to be mourned – just the way that I bear the weight.”

Way of the Seasons

These blackened sunflowers flaunted the sun
before fall’s freezes their yellows darkened –
their beauty not by time, but cold, undone.
Never can their color now be harkened

back to bloom. Charred stems stay to mark the day
when earthly sunlight blossomed from the ground –
but winter soon will wither them. The way
of the seasons by none can be unwound,

though in our stubborn reason we pretend
to rearrange the plot that plots our fate –
yet in every beginning, an end
is begun. So, Love – let us love, though late:

perhaps our passion will spin us to spring,
and in our pulse another summer sing.

~ ~ ~

Reference to "fate" and the closing lines are intended to reflect (perhaps among other things) VS 09: "Necessity is an evil, but there is no necessity to live under the control of necessity."

We sometimes included some tall sunflowers in our kitchen garden at Terrapin Branch.

(Elizabethan sonnet)