PostPoems Be Artistic. Be Creative. Be Inspired!

Seventeen years ago, you departed this earth;

ninety-nine years ago, today, Grandma gave birth

to you.  Thirty-two years later, you adopted me

into your vast and much extended family,

and its long, ancient, illustrious history,

impervious to managed timeclocks' tyranny.

Through you, your sister's Roman Catholicity,

turned my soul, later, to Orthodox theology.

For Christmas, in that distant year, nineteen sixty-three,

three months into kindergarten (I was then five),

you gave me a plastic figure, Frankenstein,

which seven years hence, brought my joy in books alive.

My seventeenth year led to a real discovery

of the glories of epic and lyric poetry.

By that time, we both knew that I was different

in who attracted me, by nature (not choice---the preferred

explanation among haters).   On our street, nosy, malign,

and bad actors happily heaped prejudiced blame

upon you for the patterns of my given nature

(for that, they used crude, vulgar nomenclature),

and because I felt quite well justified to want

a screen name (having come hate my given first name---

much mocked in school---and so I sought a new identity),

I was led, July tenth, 'Seventy-six, to a handle

which I embraced very enthusiastically:

without second thought or hesitation, I became

Starwatcher and, then much later, Starward.

Then that same summer, some of your words gave me a lift

when you acknowledged how much, how deeply, I loved BlueShift.

Now, the grandeur of the Divine Liturgy,

along with my blessed cerulean prayer-rope

once again provide assurance and the eager hope

of meeting you in Christ's constellated Eternity.

"Jerry"

fka as "Fairy Jerry"

nka

Starward