{"id":15295,"date":"2024-06-15T08:27:27","date_gmt":"2024-06-15T06:27:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/?p=15295"},"modified":"2024-06-15T08:27:27","modified_gmt":"2024-06-15T06:27:27","slug":"poems-by-rick-hartwell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/?p=15295","title":{"rendered":"poems by Rick Hartwell"},"content":{"rendered":"

Remembrance of Things Past –<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Marcel Proust<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Suddenly drowning in waves of nostalgia,<\/p>\n

not in the sense of homesickness or regret,<\/p>\n

as Roget\u2019s Thesaurus would have it, but of<\/p>\n

wistful remembrances of times and people:<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cFiner than frog\u2019s hair,\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

a friend\u2019s statement of tribute;<\/p>\n

\u201cHell\u2019s bells and cockle shells,\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

my grandmother\u2019s harsh profanity;<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s outrageous, telling me what to read,\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

when I first encounter book-banning;<\/p>\n

\u201cRound, Round, Round\u201d crooned by Perry Como,<\/em><\/p>\n

as I clumsily circle the roller-skating rink;<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Bottle caps with cork turned into badges,<\/em><\/p>\n

pressing the shirt between cork and cap;<\/p>\n

North Bay Viking funeral of a small, dead pet,<\/em><\/p>\n

setting fire to a plastic, model boat;<\/p>\n

Selected for the Boy Scout National Jamboree,<\/em><\/p>\n

first chosen, then retracted with apology;<\/p>\n

Weekly Cotillion at Newport Harbor Yacht Club,<\/em><\/p>\n

exotic at twelve, she never knew my name;<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Madeleines are great; but, chocolate works, too.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Little Lies of Faith<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A big lie would be to say that all God\u2019s words and ethereal<\/p>\n

wisdom lay in one place, at one time, before one people.<\/p>\n

A bigger lie would be to stand on the pinnacle of self-assurance<\/p>\n

believing that His word has been delivered only once.<\/p>\n

The biggest lie is to be among a chosen folk who alone<\/p>\n

think they know the righteous way of life and death.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Do not countenance the big and bigger and biggest lies;<\/p>\n

like Emerson, shun the extremes of superlatives.<\/p>\n

Do, however, grant credence to the little lies of faith,<\/p>\n

to their daily efficacy, if not their eternal infallibility.<\/p>\n

Do believe our lives are filled with accidents, becoming<\/p>\n

coincidental paths of understanding and acceptance.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Meanings, like memories, are not always meant for now;<\/p>\n

memories, like meanings, are not always accurate.<\/p>\n

Faith is a belief in a future meaning yet to be discovered,<\/p>\n

not a mundane interpretation or translation.<\/p>\n

Do not rationalize when finding comfort in little lies of faith,<\/p>\n

hope itself is faith in the little lies of life.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Our only shared singularity is our mortality — we end<\/p>\n

our lives with flawed memories and meanings of<\/p>\n

Our big and bigger and biggest lies we tell ourselves;<\/p>\n

passing presumptive judgment on one another\u2019s lies;<\/p>\n

Whether incident or accident was the cause or effect,<\/p>\n

what really matters is the little lies we tell ourselves.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Remembrance of Things Past – \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Marcel Proust   Suddenly drowning in waves of nostalgia, not in the sense of homesickness or regret,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1705,77],"tags":[1706,1123,1642],"class_list":["post-15295","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-egophobia-81","category-english","tag-egophobia-81","tag-english","tag-rick-hartwell"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6DakB-3YH","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15295","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15295"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15295\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15296,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15295\/revisions\/15296"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15295"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15295"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/egophobia.ro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15295"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}