Claire V. Bogdanos

Each morning as I a waken, in those first few moments when awareness stirs, I take the time to thank my creator for another day. I do not question whether my benefactor exists! I remember the manners that I was taught as a child and am grateful and will continue to be so for every subsequent breath that I take.Ingratitude is unacceptable! But what I wish to convey to you today is the simple fact that my heart sings and has done so for most of my life in spite of adversity. As we have learned from Job, faith is all! Tears are a necessity, like washing ones heart, purging our emotions not unlike windshield wipers clearing our vision as we travel on life’s “fractious” highway. These are not incompatible feelings but rather complimentary. The point I am attempting to advance is that one needs to be “tempered” by the other, you know “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”! The total of which leads me to an example of both beauty and sadness by Tennyson, “Tears Idle Tears”.

    “Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean,

Tears from the depth of some divine despair

Rise in the heart, and gather to the eyes,

In looking on the happy Autumn – fields,

And thinking of the days that are no more.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

As one of the “Apostles” of the 19th century and the genius who followed Wordsworth (whom I also adore) as Englands’s Poet Laureate, his writings are almost immortal and endless, each more valiant than the previous! Do you recall that I have voiced my request for another 100 years so I can get it right this time? His concluding line, “O Death in Life, the days that are no more!” He may just be the “Willie Mays” of poetry, you must make that decision on your own. You’re next up in the batter’s box, try hard to not strike out! He’s a champ!

Sincerely,

Claire B.