Utterances

“Out of the Woods at Walden Pond”
Painting by Rita Brown
From pixels.com

was a time
when I thrived
among men
and machines
of free enterprise
traveling continents
backing development
building new industries
giving to laboring poor
paths to middle class stature

I did my job well
with great pride of success
until time and debility
turned me for home
and the tools of my trade
knack for numbers
a nose for the telltale of risk
became specimens
artifact memories
sconced in museums of mind

now I write in seclusion
removed from the fight
for the wheel and the deal
I create with new tradecraft
arrangements of words
molding metaphors
fabricate stanzas erect
upon pages of commerce
exchanging new coin of this
notional literate realm

“My life has been the poem I would have writ
But I could not both live and utter it”
– Henry David Thoreau