Red

XVI. To Red, Night Butterfly .

Like trumpets raised in praise of passing kings

The lily-of-the-day salutes the sun;

No beauty greater knows he than sun brings

For sunset makes his glorious blooms undone.

But once, by chance, Dame Nature showed him night;

Entranced by flick’ring light from firefly’s dance

He undulated with a new delight,

Enthralled complete with lust’s Nocturnal trance.

Come morning, though he basked in sunshine’s heat,

His petals wilted, Hellward drooped his leaves;

The day no longer can his health complete

For nights to satisfaction are as thieves.

Variety in life may be a spice

But dear fulfillment is its heavy price.

Nov. 16, 1973, Elk Grove, IL

revised Feb. 7, 2000.

This poem needs a special introduction, because it is my apologia for putting out a book of poetry. There is a line from a Thomas Pynchon character who asks, upon being told that someone is a San Francisco poet, “Who isn’t?”

We are probably all poets, with the consensual understanding that we will not all suffer the world to bear a book of poems from each of us. As John Kenneth Galbraith once said authorship is a great indulgence of the ego; please save us as much as possible from that.

Nonetheless, here is another book of poetry! Here is the story of its first poem: I once thought, when I was young, idealistic, and free-wheeling, that I was a very gifted writer. I believed that the spirit of Shakespeare dwelt in me. You might think I thought that metaphorically or symbolically, but I am sorry to inform you that I honestly believed it. My spiritual worldview was quite, well, eclectic and prodigal. And so this Shakespeare was writing a book of sonnets. I was on about number 25 when I had a religious conversion.

I cut off all my bushy hair to symbolize my new found understanding of the vanity of things of earth, and the virtues of things above. It was natural that I should throw those 25 sonnets into the nearest garbage can. I felt that all such literary endeavors were vain scribblings. That was in 1974.

Then 26 years later, in the year 2000, when I was selling a life insurance policy to a family in Arlington Heights, Illinois, the woman of the house recognized my name. She ran a resale shop in town and had found a book there which had a sonnet in it written by a Larry Pahl. It was sonnet “xvi.”, obviously the 16^th of my 25 sonnets that I had thrown out decades ago. (I have since recovered others of the 25, given to me by old friends, etc. so maybe I have like 5 of the original 25).

I explained to the lady, who was now to be protected by the life insurance I was selling to her husband, that this particular poem had been written for a red-haired girl—I called her “Red” though I don’t think anybody else did. I did not remember her real name. She used to frequent S.O.P., Some Other Place Pub on Algonquin Rd. near Busse in Elk Grove, Illinois. (It later was called “Sundance” and has long since been bulldozed down…). I was a bouncer there.

I remember really liking Red. As a bouncer I had occasion to see a lot of girls come and go, but something about Red drew me…I was no Don Juan, I just really liked her. I asked her to go out several times, but she always told me “No, I will hurt you.” I remember thinking it was pretty cool that she had learned enough about herself to know her tendencies. I think she sensed I was a person of substance, not a fleshy brawny bouncer, and she knew that if I started dating her I would indeed really like her, and she knew her fickleness would then end up hurting me. Even though I sensed she was right I still wanted to date her. I never did.

So when this poem came to me I told my wife that I wondered why the Lord had brought it into my life at this time. Then I remembered that the place we were going that coming weekend was to a funeral of a friend whose niece, a young college girl, probably about the age of Red when I wrote the poem, would be there. Her name was Brooke, and she had red hair. I told my wife I would give the poem to her. She had been a student of my wife’s formerly, and she viewed me as a spiritual person. When I gave her the poem, she said she would read it when she could concentrate on it. She told her mother, before she read it, that she sensed that God was going to speak to her through this poem. She was in college in Michigan at the time but was back in Monmouth, Illinois for the funeral.

Brooke was living alone in Michigan at the time, and she mentioned to me that all her friends were boys. She had no real girlfriends. So, once you read the poem, written about the time she was born, you may see how it might be seen to have a message for her at that time in her life.

It was hard to throw out my sonnets when I did, but I felt it was the right thing to do at that time. I now believe it is time to make more public some of the verses I have written over the years. When one of my poems returned to me over 25 years after it was written, I was reminded that words could live on, and that words crafted with care and meaning can minister to different people at different times. While I know that this current collection, Look!, will have very minor circulation, I am happy to offer it in 2019 for whatever few readers may come its way. Larry