One Man's Profit

Tonight I ventured out after being shut in for a few days of bad weather. Robert S. King, poet and member of NCWN West, was featured at Writers Night Out, a monthly event facilitated by poet, Karen Holmes.

Robert has recently published a poetry collection, One Man’s Profit, and in this book is one of my favorite poems, In Flight, originally published in The Bookends Review. It deals with the way we want to die.

Robert admits that his poetry lends itself to the darker side. Perhaps that is why I find this book appealing. The darker side has shadowed my own life in recent years.

Another of his poems in this book touches me as he writes about land. The poem is Grandmother. She works the land, sees it for how it fills her needs and doesn’t appreciate what the poet sees – the ancient trees, “the tall green grass stalks dancing like soulmates of the wind.” While her roots run deep, his seed is in the wind. Yet she teaches him the important things that make him “one not afraid to get his hands dirty.”

On Mother’s Day lets us see the devastation of his mother’s memory loss, the pain he felt, “I hurt that in the end you did not know me or yourself.” The poet continues with the pain she endured at her death. Anyone who has loved his mother will feel the depth of emotion in this poem.

Senior Moments is one of the poems Robert read tonight. Those of us near his age can relate.
…“I’ve got some sit- around friends,
all with that faraway look in their eyes.
Always nodding, one calls herself Dementia.

Is oblivion better than needles of worry?
Dementia knows, but she’s not saying.
Pain is not my friend, but so far
I can talk him down from the ledge.”

While I am certainly not a poetry critic, I know what I like. I like this book, One Man’s Profit, published by Sweatshoppe Publications. I enjoy the poems more with each reading.