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Tangled Wood

  Barbara Jewell Pond

  copyright 1946 Barbara J. Pond

  From the Tangled Wood is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. This means you’re free to copy, distribute and transmit the work, or to adapt the work into any form or media, so long as you give Barbara J Pond credit for what she did (though not in any way that suggests that she endorses you or your use of this work), and so long as you ‘share alike’ – if you alter, transform, or build upon this work, then you distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license as this one.

  Table of Contents

  Captivity

  The Helmsman

  A Poem Is A Little Thing

  Portrait II

  Loneliness

  The Ways I Miss You

  Winter

  Apostrophe To Morning

  Two Loves

  Christmas – 1943

  Storm

  The Snow Of Peace

  Beyond The Moon

  God Made My Heart

  Sketch

  Sonnet On Graduation

  Pianist

  My Love Grows Deep

  Death Of A Rose

  A Song

  You Are Angels’ Choirs

  Blood

  A Butterfly and a Man’s Mind

  To Nicky

  The Fool

  My Love Has Wings

  The Circle Incomplete

  Frames

  Love’s Questions

  My Love Is The Singing Sands

  Creation’s Dream

  Our Love In Ten Metaphors

  For Every Crimson Streak

  Love

  “The American Way Of Life”

  Sonnet On Humility

  Darkness And White Lace

  Requiescat In Pace

  Sonnet On Desire

  The Guardian Of The Wood

  Dedication:

  To FJB

  whose inspiration, help, and deep understanding made this collection possible.

  Introduction

  These are the poems of my teenage years. Reading them after 60+ years, I was surprised that so many dealt with death & dying. That was the time when our country was in its great struggle of WWII. My older brother was in the Army Air Corps, and Air Force cadets were studying meteorology at Vanderbilt. My father, Dr W B Jewell, Chairman of the Geology Department, taught advanced geography to most of the cadets. At West End High School, a number of my male friends, or my brother John’s friends, were already overseas. Several were killed at the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes. Naturally we all worried about their safety. But many of the boys were eager to enlist. Americans were united in support of the war effort. One of my brother’s best friends spent 2 years in a Nazi concentration camp. He survived, but when he came for dinner after being released, he said he never wanted to eat another potato!

  On the “home front” we faced rationing of butter, sugar, & gasoline. We learned about margarine & nylons. Movies were filled with high melodrama and we looked up to famous celebrities who left to fight overseas – Jimmy Stewart & Ted Williams, among many others…

  —BJP

  Captivity

  If only from my soul could issue forth

  My purest aims, embodied in wild song,

  So that their trembling notes would fill the earth

  With courage that would make the weak man strong,

  I would breathe words to make dying men feel

  That they had strength to draw another breath,

  And songs to make the coward scorn to kneel,

  Trembling, before the personage of Death.

  My melody could give each child just born

  A glimpse of gleaming heights where he might rise;

  This goal in view, he would wear wings of morn,

  Whose plumes paint brilliantly the sinless skies.

  Yet these songs in my soul must captive lie,

  Bound by the bars of earth, until I die.

  The Helmsman

  My days are wrought with many dreams,

  Idle visions of a fairer world:

  With him beside me, my life is

  As a sturdy ship with sails unfurled,

  Her prow nosed in an angry sea;

  Her banners flung to the eastern sky

  With defiance for the storms of life

  Waiting to set my hopes awry;

  And standing firmly at the wheel,

  His feet braced wide, his shoulders square,

  Unmindful of the stinging spray

  That dampens both his face and hair,

  Is the helmsman. His jaw is set;

  His green eyes, clear, upon the sea;

  This ship must safely reach its port,

  In answer to my trusting plea.

  … Aside from dreams …

  My ship will never reach its port,

  Or weather any of life’s gales

  If my pilot does not take the wheel—

  For without him, every dream will fail.

  A Poem Is A Little Thing

  A poem is a little thing—

  The words of one

  Who was born to sing

  Without accompaniment;

  Yet when,

  Within the hearts of men,

  His words, their destinies fulfill,

  All other music of the world,

  And of the stars—

  Is still.

  Portrait II

  Dark brows,

  Often in anger striving to unite

  In one black line of danger.

  Amber eyes,

  Reflecting the churning waters

  Of a turbulent soul—

  At times, the light

  Playing on the dappled surface

  Of a quiet pool;

  At times, submerged

  To depths

  Unchartered by a single beam of light.

  Small mouth,

  The corners an indicator

  Of moods

  As fluid,

  As predictable,

  As the course of an ant

  Confronted by a human foot.

  Line of cheek and jaw,

  Resolute and immovable

  As time.

  Lift of the chin,

  Upward.

  Yet were I

  Maker of the universe,

  This is one atom of the human race

  I would not alter.

  Loneliness

  A dark shadow,

  Alone

  In the swirling pastel mists

  Of gaiety,

  Bows low,

  Unseen,

  Unheard,

  Ashamed

  Of its obscurity.

  The Ways I Miss You

  I miss you in the sunset’s blood,

  I miss you in a flower bud,

  Unopened,

  Kissed by dew.

  I miss you in the ticking clocks,

  I miss you in a letter box

  Filled

  With dear memories.

  I miss you in a glowing fire,

  I miss you in a church’s spire

  Reaching

  Up to God.

  I miss you in a withered leaf,

  I miss you when I see the grief

  Of others.

  I miss you when I try to write,

  And when I see the street light

  Where we stood

  Together.

  I miss you in the sadness of a spaniel’s eyes,

  I miss you in the dawn of Autumn skies—

  Clear,

  And cloudless.

  I miss you when I want to cry,

  And when I see two lovers say goodbye

  The wa
y

  We did.

  I miss you in my sorrows,

  And I shall miss you all the todays and the tomorrows

  Till it be

  That we shall meet again.

  I missed you from the start;

  In all these I miss you—

  But above all, Beloved,

  I miss you in my heart.

  Winter

  Beauty has deserted her earth,

  And the skies are faded.

  The music of the planetary winds

  Is now but discord.

  The world is naked,

  And dead.

  Why should I pilgrimage with birds,

  Seeking life?

  I shall stay here,

  Here with death,

  For my tears helped to streak that faded sky;

  Winter and I are old friends—

  Why should I leave?

  Apostrophe To Morning

  O wings of Morn,

  If only thou didst have the power

  To raise my soul,

  That in one shimmering hour

  From out the abyss of eternity,

  It might view, beyond the shades of night,

  That stainless shore

  To which all singers of immortal songs

  Repair their bodies

  Soon or late;

  Then,

  O gilt-veiled purity,

  Could I sing to man

  My song;

  And it would be the hymn of beauty;

  And on its wings might the broken rise

  To view the stainless shore

  Beyond the shades of night.

  Two Loves

  Of these two loves have I tasted,

  As different as curses and prayers;

  The first had the taste of new wine—

  Claret, sparkling and rare;

  It parched my mouth as I drank;

  When the last drop was drained, my throat ached;

  While the other had the savor of bread

  That was warm, and freshly baked.

  I scarcely noticed its flavor,

  I screamed for the wine denied;

  Yet when I arose from that table,

  I was nourished and satisfied.

  Christmas – 1943

  The earth lies sterile,

  Beneath the livid scars

  Wrought by the scythe

  Of Death.

  The virgin snow is stained,

  Indelibly,

  With the life stream

  Of the valiant.

  Stretching toward

  The sky of tears,

  The blackened fields,

  Which once were gilded

  By the gold of grain,

  Bear their mute testimony

  To the God of peace.

  Yet the sterile earth,

  The blackened fields,

  The blood-stained snow,

  Still raise,

  Though silently,

  The eternal

  Hymn of praise

  That there is still,

  Amid the blackness

  Of a world gone mad,

  Hope.

  Hope,

  Embodied in

  One bright shining star.

  Hope, which,

  Germinated by

  The warmth of faith

  And tears of joy,

  Shall spring

  From the sterile earth,

  From the blackened fields,

  Once more,

  The green

  Of the eternal spring.

  (This poem won the Nashville city poetry contest of 1944 and placed third in the Tennessee state poetry contest of 1944.)

  Storm

  Night is an ebony slave

  Who bows

  Before the throne of Evil;

  But, when the Furies

  Of his master’s wrath

  Are loosed,

  His back is smote with the whip

  Of lightning.

  He