Happy New Year everyone! I hope your holidays were a blessing to you this year. Mine were a little rough this year because they were the first ones I experienced without my dad who passed away last May. “Four Score Years Ago,” however, is a sonnet I wrote six years ago to commemorate my mother’s 80th birthday, which was on January 8, 2017. A “score,” by the way, is an archaic word which simply mean 20 years. A few months after her birthday that year, the poem was also published in a literary journal at the University of Baltimore called Skelter. Four years ago, Mom went home to be with Jesus. I miss you and dad both today—but take solace in knowing that you are celebrating together in heaven with the Lord!
Tag: Poetry
Four Score Years Ago
Fall Risk
My Unearthing
A Little Bit about “Flashbulb Memory”
In short, flashbulb memories are memories that detail specific activities that occurred in one’s life during a significant or traumatic event. I wrote “Flashbulb Memory” in a poetry writing class during my first semester at the University of Baltimore back in 2015. In the spring of 2016, it was also published in our college’s literary journal, Skelter. For the assignment, our professor wanted us to write about our earliest childhood memory, which for me was the assassination of John F. Kennedy—also a flashbulb memory…And, yes, I know. I’m old. Don’t remind me. What is your earliest childhood memory? If you get a minute, please share it with us.
Flashbulb Memory
A Little Bit about “Our First Year Together”
It is the best of both worlds when your spouse is also your best friend. I now live in both of those worlds because of you, Amanda. Several years before I met you, I began praying for a wife. Almost every day, I would ask Jesus to prepare a woman especially for me, a woman who would
love me despite the challenges Usher Syndrome presents, a woman who would get me as a poet, a woman who would understand when I asked her to tell me what she sees in the gutter because that’s where poetry often lies. Since I am not the typical everyday guy, I knew you would not be the typical everyday gal. And that is what I love most about you. By the way, back when I was praying for my future wife, I was also asking Jesus to prepare me for her. After we met, you told me that you had been praying a similar prayer as well. He answered both of our prayers when we married on October 30, 2021.
Although through no fault of our own, “Our First Year Together” was not the Hollywood, romanticized version. They seldom are; that is because expectations and reality are often at odds. As we look back on our first year together, however, we know now that the script Jesus wrote for us to follow will help sharpen us for where He will be taking us in the future: “As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another” (Proverbs 27:17). I love you, Amanda, and am looking forward to what our second year together brings. By the way, the chocolate chip cookies are delicious! Thanks for baking them for me, my Ruth, from your Boaz.
The Poet's Point 