Writing – as a second language

Nebraska near Chimney Rock-2018

 

The Art of Writing

I’ve enjoyed writing since I was young, but because of my first love, art, I dropped the writing and focused on art. Serving the needs of small business clients; however, I often found myself doing the writing as the projects progressed.

Writing I have found akin to design and drawing; the thought processes are much the same, and they both have their rules, music too, another love of mine.

It was a family story my mother told on several times in my youth and later as a young man. It had been many years since I had heard the story and one day I decided to write down the bones of the story so that I and others might not forget Francis, the uncle I never knew. I asked my mother to tell the story one more time. My notes filled three pages of the legal pad. The emotion of that experience was missing in my notes. And so more than six months later and after many hours of work, I finished the story: all forty-plus pages of it – typed space and a half.

I presented the manuscript to my mother sometime later. Some three years passed, and in the many times of our visits together never was the story mentioned. I stopped by for a visit one day, and surprisingly she told me she had finally sat down and read the story. She told me she did not know how she would feel about reading a story about her life on a farm in the years of the depression and the death of her brother. It was strange, she said, to read the story of her youth, written by her son, born many years later. She then told me it was a good story, and she found it to be remarkably close to the way things were.

I cherish the gift of the time she gave to me in the reading and her words to me afterward. Such is the power of stories.

Writing down the feelings

• The emotional 
• The whimsical
• When a picture is not enough

The following is dedicated to the hearts of us all.

Our Hearts

We all have one physical heart, you, me, and monkeys that swing in trees, birds, fish, reptiles, and little insects too, beating out the rhythm of their lives. Now octopuses, worms, and a few others have two or more hearts.

So, what about you, what about me? How many hearts have we? Our hearts pulse within us, a physical heart, pumping life-giving blood to every cell of our body.  Did you know there are hearts within you not seen, only felt? What about our unseen heart, number two, and multitudes more?

Now, let’s explore some of our unseen hearts.

One is the heart that frees,

Like a bird on the wing

Like a child on a swing looks to the sky

As clouds on the blue pass by above

Look to the skies and set your heart free

One is a brave heart,

Like a mother, a father, protecting their young

One is the heart that comforts another,

Like the whisper of wind in treetops above

And birds as they sing

Like the listening ear of another

And the gentle voice of reply

Gentle is the heart

That walks the field and grassland

That climbs the sloping hill

And crosses the babbling brook

From nature, our hearts learn

In the sunrise and the promise of a new day

In the peace of a quiet morning

In the power of the summer storm

Rejoicing in the storms passing and the colors of a rainbow.

Nearing the sunset and in the dusk of the day, colors intensify and the curtain of another day closes

As the sun slips behind the hills, glorious are the moments of its setting.

The night swallows the last light of another day, gone.

It is now that we embrace the darkness of the night, trusting, knowing that we do not travel alone.

The wisdom of the ages, this earth, with its precious blanket of atmosphere, weaves with intricate balance, the air that we breathe, the life that we live.

As the blanket of a child, this earth is ours to hold close to our heart, to love, to examine, to know the one who gives all that there is. And so, my heart transforms into the heart of the other.

 

2019 – Robert Buckner

The writing

• of Prose
• of Poems
• of Prayers
• of Promises

Of Poems: