Berserker force leaves
outside my shaggy garden
hesitate to fall
directly on my path.
The arctic autumn is poised
behind the current
front lines of summer,
the coming campaign building
like storm clouds often
do.
Some years ago my poetry took on a mythic flavor and I became a character in my own poems, a mage, "the man of the Northern Wall". This apellation is not completely fictional. My middle name is Noordwal, a Dutch term for north wall, though in current Dutch it mainly means north bank as in riverbank. I was told that an ancestor, a Portugese Jew escaping the Inquisition, settled in a small Dutch town and took this name from where he settled, near the north wall of the town. I have thought for a long time that -wal meant wall, think my mother told me that. A linguist might say that my usage is no longer common, is an older usage, but then the Inquisition happened in Portugal a few centuries ago, right around the time the Moors lost control of the Iberian Peninsula and the Jews lost the modest protection given them by Islam. Now I write as this mage, my poetry persona.
Mechanical designer for industry, now retired, once a Bay Area Hippie, went undercover in 1972, I've been writing poetry for years.
Contact: 3topper45@gmail.com
To be at the Centre whilst the battle-lines are drawn up elsewhere...... Is this not an aspect of Grace?
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