Searching for the Poetry in Life

I have a defined benefit pension, a 401K and a paid-off mortgage. I keep a calendar to track my appointments and on it we plan our vacations and trips to see my aging mother. I got a sound education, thanks to my parents' foresight, and have had good jobs and a steadily advancing amount of both responsibility and compensation. I set aside money each month for life's uncertainties. My credit cards have a zero balance at the end of each payment period. I am an incredibly fortunate man, because fortune has indeed been kind to me.

People of a more adventurous bent might consider my life prosaic. In truth, and on balance, I have lived it more in prose than poetry. But every life has poetic moments, and I have been fortunate to have those too. My wife, my children and grandchildren, our three dogs, the surprise of each year's spring, fireflies filling the trees on a summer night, and the beauty of light as it surges through my completed stained glass panels have all created unplanned moments and have produced unending joys. Even the loss of my father, my wife's parents, close friends, our pets, and our children's divorces have brought the depth of feeling and the closeness of hearts touching that prose cannot capture, much as I have tried to make sense of these events through thinking about them. Perhaps it is because I think in prose as well.

More...