Poetry corner

My first attempt at poetry since college...(20 years+)

Be kind, but honest, and feel free to share yours:

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Summation

Paint not a wider world upon which we must toil and parley,
for history's hale handmaiden will render of both victories and varnishes an equally shallow luster and depth.

Contentment, surely, was never the vice of any man,
but rather the aspiration and refuge, alone, of the wise and the just.

Not that we've oft attained that hallowed height, though desperately we'd have done--
for the allurements of the earth (and the father of it) have been too strong for us.

But, we pray that at rare times we be remembered for having desired it,
and in the desiring, perhaps that we did sometimes discover a morsel of truth...
or were caressed by the wingtips of angels.