Tangled Wood
Barbara Jewell Pond
copyright 1946 Barbara J. Pond
From the Tangled Wood is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. This means you’re free to copy, distribute and transmit the work, or to adapt the work into any form or media, so long as you give Barbara J Pond credit for what she did (though not in any way that suggests that she endorses you or your use of this work), and so long as you ‘share alike’ – if you alter, transform, or build upon this work, then you distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license as this one.
Table of Contents
Captivity
The Helmsman
A Poem Is A Little Thing
Portrait II
Loneliness
The Ways I Miss You
Winter
Apostrophe To Morning
Two Loves
Christmas – 1943
Storm
The Snow Of Peace
Beyond The Moon
God Made My Heart
Sketch
Sonnet On Graduation
Pianist
My Love Grows Deep
Death Of A Rose
A Song
You Are Angels’ Choirs
Blood
A Butterfly and a Man’s Mind
To Nicky
The Fool
My Love Has Wings
The Circle Incomplete
Frames
Love’s Questions
My Love Is The Singing Sands
Creation’s Dream
Our Love In Ten Metaphors
For Every Crimson Streak
Love
“The American Way Of Life”
Sonnet On Humility
Darkness And White Lace
Requiescat In Pace
Sonnet On Desire
The Guardian Of The Wood
Dedication:
To FJB
whose inspiration, help, and deep understanding made this collection possible.
Introduction
These are the poems of my teenage years. Reading them after 60+ years, I was surprised that so many dealt with death & dying. That was the time when our country was in its great struggle of WWII. My older brother was in the Army Air Corps, and Air Force cadets were studying meteorology at Vanderbilt. My father, Dr W B Jewell, Chairman of the Geology Department, taught advanced geography to most of the cadets. At West End High School, a number of my male friends, or my brother John’s friends, were already overseas. Several were killed at the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes. Naturally we all worried about their safety. But many of the boys were eager to enlist. Americans were united in support of the war effort. One of my brother’s best friends spent 2 years in a Nazi concentration camp. He survived, but when he came for dinner after being released, he said he never wanted to eat another potato!
On the “home front” we faced rationing of butter, sugar, & gasoline. We learned about margarine & nylons. Movies were filled with high melodrama and we looked up to famous celebrities who left to fight overseas – Jimmy Stewart & Ted Williams, among many others…
—BJP
Captivity
If only from my soul could issue forth
My purest aims, embodied in wild song,
So that their trembling notes would fill the earth
With courage that would make the weak man strong,
I would breathe words to make dying men feel
That they had strength to draw another breath,
And songs to make the coward scorn to kneel,
Trembling, before the personage of Death.
My melody could give each child just born
A glimpse of gleaming heights where he might rise;
This goal in view, he would wear wings of morn,
Whose plumes paint brilliantly the sinless skies.
Yet these songs in my soul must captive lie,
Bound by the bars of earth, until I die.
The Helmsman
My days are wrought with many dreams,
Idle visions of a fairer world:
With him beside me, my life is
As a sturdy ship with sails unfurled,
Her prow nosed in an angry sea;
Her banners flung to the eastern sky
With defiance for the storms of life
Waiting to set my hopes awry;
And standing firmly at the wheel,
His feet braced wide, his shoulders square,
Unmindful of the stinging spray
That dampens both his face and hair,
Is the helmsman. His jaw is set;
His green eyes, clear, upon the sea;
This ship must safely reach its port,
In answer to my trusting plea.
… Aside from dreams …
My ship will never reach its port,
Or weather any of life’s gales
If my pilot does not take the wheel—
For without him, every dream will fail.
A Poem Is A Little Thing
A poem is a little thing—
The words of one
Who was born to sing
Without accompaniment;
Yet when,
Within the hearts of men,
His words, their destinies fulfill,
All other music of the world,
And of the stars—
Is still.
Portrait II
Dark brows,
Often in anger striving to unite
In one black line of danger.
Amber eyes,
Reflecting the churning waters
Of a turbulent soul—
At times, the light
Playing on the dappled surface
Of a quiet pool;
At times, submerged
To depths
Unchartered by a single beam of light.
Small mouth,
The corners an indicator
Of moods
As fluid,
As predictable,
As the course of an ant
Confronted by a human foot.
Line of cheek and jaw,
Resolute and immovable
As time.
Lift of the chin,
Upward.
Yet were I
Maker of the universe,
This is one atom of the human race
I would not alter.
Loneliness
A dark shadow,
Alone
In the swirling pastel mists
Of gaiety,
Bows low,
Unseen,
Unheard,
Ashamed
Of its obscurity.
The Ways I Miss You
I miss you in the sunset’s blood,
I miss you in a flower bud,
Unopened,
Kissed by dew.
I miss you in the ticking clocks,
I miss you in a letter box
Filled
With dear memories.
I miss you in a glowing fire,
I miss you in a church’s spire
Reaching
Up to God.
I miss you in a withered leaf,
I miss you when I see the grief
Of others.
I miss you when I try to write,
And when I see the street light
Where we stood
Together.
I miss you in the sadness of a spaniel’s eyes,
I miss you in the dawn of Autumn skies—
Clear,
And cloudless.
I miss you when I want to cry,
And when I see two lovers say goodbye
The wa
y
We did.
I miss you in my sorrows,
And I shall miss you all the todays and the tomorrows
Till it be
That we shall meet again.
I missed you from the start;
In all these I miss you—
But above all, Beloved,
I miss you in my heart.
Winter
Beauty has deserted her earth,
And the skies are faded.
The music of the planetary winds
Is now but discord.
The world is naked,
And dead.
Why should I pilgrimage with birds,
Seeking life?
I shall stay here,
Here with death,
For my tears helped to streak that faded sky;
Winter and I are old friends—
Why should I leave?
Apostrophe To Morning
O wings of Morn,
If only thou didst have the power
To raise my soul,
That in one shimmering hour
From out the abyss of eternity,
It might view, beyond the shades of night,
That stainless shore
To which all singers of immortal songs
Repair their bodies
Soon or late;
Then,
O gilt-veiled purity,
Could I sing to man
My song;
And on its wings might the broken rise
To view the stainless shore
Beyond the shades of night.
Two Loves
Of these two loves have I tasted,
As different as curses and prayers;
The first had the taste of new wine—
Claret, sparkling and rare;
It parched my mouth as I drank;
When the last drop was drained, my throat ached;
While the other had the savor of bread
That was warm, and freshly baked.
I scarcely noticed its flavor,
I screamed for the wine denied;
Yet when I arose from that table,
I was nourished and satisfied.
Christmas – 1943
The earth lies sterile,
Beneath the livid scars
Wrought by the scythe
Of Death.
The virgin snow is stained,
Indelibly,
With the life stream
Of the valiant.
Stretching toward
The sky of tears,
The blackened fields,
Which once were gilded
By the gold of grain,
Bear their mute testimony
To the God of peace.
Yet the sterile earth,
The blackened fields,
The blood-stained snow,
Still raise,
Though silently,
The eternal
Hymn of praise
That there is still,
Amid the blackness
Of a world gone mad,
Hope.
Hope,
Embodied in
One bright shining star.
Hope, which,
Germinated by
The warmth of faith
And tears of joy,
Shall spring
From the sterile earth,
From the blackened fields,
Once more,
The green
Of the eternal spring.
(This poem won the Nashville city poetry contest of 1944 and placed third in the Tennessee state poetry contest of 1944.)
Storm
Night is an ebony slave
Who bows
Before the throne of Evil;
But, when the Furies
Of his master’s wrath
Are loosed,
His back is smote with the whip
Of lightning.
He