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Today is a special anniversary for me, commemorating Monday, October 13, 1975.  I realize tat fifty years have not yet fully elapsed; but, given my health issues, I do not know if I will see the fiftieth anniversary, so I will write about it now.

From sometime in thespring of 1972 until October 12th, 1975, I had aspired to be a prose writer specializing in horror stories, murder mysteries, and science fiction tales.  My small library of paperback books contained short story anthologies of all three, and several novels from each genre.  I discovered, somewhat disappointedly, that I had no ability for sustained narrative in prose.  I thought my beginnings and ending were fairly good for an adolescent, but the middle parts really stymied me.

At the same time, I was developing a keen interest in Early Christianity and the intimacies of romance.  During the summer of 1975, my parents compelled me to work five days per week as a surveyor's apprentice in a local road maintenance department; and as the summer waned, my interest in those three genres waned with it.  On Labor Day weekend of 1975, my parents compelled me to go with them to a Sunday afternoon showing of the movie, Jaws.  I did not give them the satisfaction of telling them how much I had liked it, but the next day, I purchased a paperback copy of the novel from our town's sole convenience store, which was open for business on the holiday.  School started the day after, and, during my first trip to the public library of that schoolyear, I checked out Lew Wallace's Biblical novel, Ben-Hur.  These two novels, which I read alternately, convinced me that I had no future in prose.

What I enjoyed were brief moments, sudden surges of strong emotions, or strong remembrances.  I did not thnk that these could sustain a long short story or a short novel, at least of the kind I could write.  But, as I walked home from school, on Monday, October 13th, 1975, I began thinking about another book I had begun to read:  a translation of the Ecclesiastical History written by Saint Eusebius, the first professional Christian historian.  His narrative seemed to be a conglomerate of "moments" of significance; and his text, even though cast in English prose, seemed poetic.  By the time I arrived home, I had decided that I wanted to write Poetry.

During my upbringing, my parents forbid me to participate in four things:  communism, homosexuality, poetry, and the lifestyle of people who were called, in those days, hippies.  My parents believed that if one indulged in any one of those aspects, one also indulged in at least one other of them.  They also recommended that I always demonstrate ambition in the presence of relatives and neighbors; and that I must never show strong interest in any particular topic, because strong interest, according to neighbor Doris across the street, was obsession in disguise and a clear indicator of mental instability.  A younh man further down our street, whose adolescence had taken place during my eleentary school years, had demonstrated an especially strong interest in the plays of Shakespeare.  He was also a "homo," as my parents, their peers, and neighbor Doris often said.  No one could say whether he became interested in the plays because of his homosexuality, or admitted his homosexuality because of the plays.  The neighbors on our small, dead-end street, at the edge of a rural village in a large farming township, just knew the two were related.  I have it on good authority that this same young man never became a communist or a hippie.

My mother had a way of belittling any idea of mine with which my parents disagreed, by saying---in a tone of almost extreme pity---"Oh, honey, who put that idea into your head?"  They rarely gave me credit for doing anything right; and I could not even get credit for doing things that they deemed to be wrong.  But on October 13th, 1975, during dinner, I decided to announce my new interest to them, and stand up for it against the criticism that I anticipated would come at me in an onslaught.  So, during the meal, I simply told them I was giving up any further interest in horror stories, murer mysteries and science fiction tales, and turning to a study of Poetry in order to learn how to write it and how to be a Poet because that, and that alone, was my sole ambition in life.

Their facial expressions suddenly withered; blanched, I believe, is another way to describe it.  I knew that, in their minds, they were silently attempting to do the math ("If he is interested in poetry, he must also be inclining toward at least one of the other three"), and, taking advantage of their sudden silence, I assured them that no one had put the idea into my head, I had reached that conclusion all by myself. 

That night, I disposed of all my typewritten prose failures.  I began to write some Biblical poetry:  I wrote about the murder of John the Baptist; and then the apocryphal tale of Agbar, the king of Edessa, who was said to have sent Jesus a written invitation to visit, or even live in, Edessa.  A couple of days later, I went to the bookstore and purchased a copy of John Milton's poems, Paradise Lost, Samson Agonistes, and Lycidas.

From even before 1972, I had hated and despised my mundane identity and name, especially when it was used as a slur by bullies who insulted or assaulted me because I was perceived to be "different."  I did not believe that my mundane name would seem proper to a volume of Poetry.  My handle, Starwatcher, and my First Beloved, J-Wave, were still nine months in my future.  Starwatcher evolved, several years ago, into Starward, which I have asked to be inscribed over my mundane name on my tombstone.

Forty eight years later, on this day in 2023, I can say that the five thousand and seven hundred poems I have posted to PostPoems had their earliest beginnings on that day in 1975.  I do not consider Poetry a right or an entitlement, but a privilege; and one for which due preparation must be carefully and dilligently pursued.  But Love, Who is God, as the Apostle Saint John tells us in his First Epistle (at 4:8), has blessed me with the privilege of writing these poems, and of posting them at PostPoems, and for that I am grateful now and will be forever grateful in eternity.

Starward