William Wolff

Calgary, Alberta

I have had many jobs, including librarian in a small town. My education consists of ten grades, including one year of high school. My hobbies as a teenager were art and sports. A strange feature of my life was that I've had many dangerous accidents and close calls, all of which I escaped with a few scratches. For me, poems are friends and poetry has always been an aesthetic comfort and a healing force. Poetry is infused with endless ideas and enticing mysteries. It is romance, reality and mysticism. Poetry is one of the noblest creations of the human mind.

The Old Cherry Tree

My mind is full of one old cherry tree,
Whose branches I climbed as a child in quest
Of my then slumbering identity.
Remembrance finds my pastoral friend drest
In rich green shimmering with silver flame,
The dusky cherries bursting with the life
And love that saturate the cosmic frame.
Leaf, branch and fruit are wounded not with strife,
But shine with nature's unencumbered joy.
Instructor of the soul - o tree of love -
You were in mystic union with the boy;
The man to bursts of lyric thought you move.
Alas, the canker reappears anon,
And minds me that the storm of hate howls on.

The Strident Epochs Drown

The strident epochs drown, but you remain
With your colossal bulk. The world, amazed,
Has tried your timeless riddle, but in vain.
With your blind, yet all seeing orbs you have gazed
On what far-ranging dreams and mysteries?
Your being, seraphic and malevolent,
Incorporates creative energies,
And flaunts the death wish as an ornament;
In your eyes, fixed in trance, love blends with hate;
Your features embrace joy and agony.
What are you - demon-god, unbending fate,
The dark unconscious, judge of history?
Your visage, merciful and merciless,
Compels the mind to hope, to fear, to guess.

To A Wild Pear Tree

As I walked along in despondent mood,
There came into my sight
A wild pear tree.
Unconsciously guiding my steps thither, I stood,
With orphan loneliness, under the leafy crown bright.
The boughs, O the green boughs enfolded me,
As a mother enfolds her weeping child in the night.