Castle Caretaker

I collected all of my “100% poetry” computer writings from over the past year (not including prose of any sort), and the compilation is over 11,000 words and 50 pages. It’s odd looking back over them, not only because I consider many of those poems irreparable, ugly, or hopeless, but because they are footsteps along a journey I’ve taken. Faltering, yes, but an obstinate trek nonetheless. I see in those words things others cannot, knowing when I substituted joyful poems for sadness, or vice versa, or wove a net of complicated ideas into an elitist glob. And there are pretty moments, also.

I remember.

And the tears that arrive at the corners of my eyes, well, I remember why, and they are warranted, welcome, for the happiness, fears, failures, pains, hopes recalled, restored to me in moments like these where the soul needs a little refurbishing.

I’m the caretaker of a cobbled castle

stoking forever the struggling furnace.

never do I, even on whim, allow visitors

ringing the threshold carillon in;

my fortress is drafty, and only

by locking and shuttering myself within

might the fires suffice.

yet here they are, outsiders - oh my soul -

drinking the wine, pulling the pork,

leaving trails of grime and dirt,

opening every window and door -

and I care for them all the same

opening the treasures of my domain

which they collect in their inquisitive hands –

overnight they slip out again, whisking

the gold with, with windows wide behind

and every morning, the biting cold,

the drafty emptiness of morning

shoulders in, settling over everything,

and the furnace is insufficient again

Some of the poems I remember writing fondly, and some I scarcely remember writing at all. These poems are the oddest, because usually I can remember journal entries I wrote years ago, merely by reading the opening lines of the page. But as I glanced over my poetry, even pieces I wrote mere weeks past are foreign to my eyes. I cannot recall the emotional backdrop or even the time I spent puzzling together those lines. I had those pieces inside of me, once, but they are mine no longer. 

http://benjaminwblog.com/2014/06/castle-caretaker/