These poems are
tracks marking the
happy meandering path
of ongoing discovery ...
Copyright © JamesRayWilson.com. All rights reserved.



                                
                                             
                                             Dedication: To Mom and Dad ...

    Who against their better judgment allowed me to grow up the way I wanted to and then chose
    to be proud of me anyway.

    Poetry has a bad reputation in the general population. It is seen as a literature of insignificant
    value. Murky writings that are difficult if not impossible to understand with little or no value in
    daily life.

    Hopefully, the poetry of our generation is changing that evaluation. Many poets today write clear,
    concise, plain, understandable, and useful poems. I was struggling with how to say this, and on
    a December morning I turned a page in Walt McDonald’s Faith is a Radical Master and in the
    afterword read:

                 Robert Frost claimed poetry at its best can be “a momentary stay
         against confusion.” I like that - and I think maybe he’s right. Even the
         everyday has splendors that we strain to capture and save, or at least
         express for seconds in phone calls and letters - in form or on canvas,
         in melodies, or in scribblings we call poems.

    This is what I hope you’ll find in the scribblings of Poetry Floats.

    This is my fifth book of verse that I had to write for you. After boiling down 60 years of life I
    have either gotten down to the distilled nectar of life or the scum at the bottom of the pot.
    Frankly any particular day can go either way. But this is what I want to tell you. Live in the now
    moment of your life. Touch it, twist it, clarify it, gripe about it, enjoy it, but above all be
    conscious of it. If you live in the past you live in regret - which you can’t do anything about. If
    you live in the future you live in a hope - which you can’t do anything about either, and you are
    missing now. So love now. Make the most of it because now is where your pot is boiling and
    where you can effect your life. Do it. Enjoy. Read a few of these verses.

    Talk to me ...  jwilson@abilene.com
        Jim





    Copyright -- Jim Wilson 2009


Poetry Floats
New and Selected Philosophy-lite