Today's poem by me, your comments please?

Question

CROSSROADS

I stand at the crossroads and wonder

Which way am I to turn?

The skies now seem to thunder

My heart within me burn.

I know not the decision

That brought me to this moment,

It was not my precision

Or reason so well spent.

I've passed so many milestones

Along the path of life

No single one my destination owns,

The reason of my strife.

I look down the lonesome way

That before me lies,

Leading to the final day

When all within me dies.

But another went before me,

For me His cross He bore,

That all my roads Cross roads should be,

And I should doubt no more.

©August 7,2008 Albert K. Jungers All rights reserved.

Answer 1

I see overarching, initial fear in this piece. It's interesting because it speaks not only of fear, to me, but of so many emotions at once. Kind of neat how you did this without necessarily being explicit. Maybe this wasn't intended, but I can see fear, also loneliness; confusion, that halts, but which simultaneously spurs all of our senses, as things do, from time to time, in this opportunity of life. Also, deep reflection, then, resolution through the reconciling of past and future with the present. I may be reading what I want into your poem. But, it hits "home" ;-) and contains much depth in my mind. Great work!

EDIT: Oh, thanx Fr. Al :-) :-)!! I remember being lambasted in a highschool poetry class for spinning my own interpretations. After that, I got bored. I mean, what fun is there in analyzing poetry from ONLY the author's point of view, though :-) :-)? That was my contention. LOL. I ended up taking one other class in undergrad university, from which I retained very little, but remember being very fond of T.S. Eliot. Loooong way of saying, I know so very little about poetry, but I enjoy the odd bit, that strikes the right key, with me :-) :-). And, your piece did just that. Lovely!

EDIT 2: Yeah, my old english teacher was a grump. So linear, I thought, at the time, to just know what the author intended. What about all else? But, yeah, I tend to agree and I think you just sorted why I am captured by certain pieces. Those that just let the imagination soar are the best! The more multifacted the angles, the better :-) :-).

Your piece allows precise, linguistic relfection on emotions and thoughts had that are initially too tied up to lend themselves to language, so it opens eyes to personal perspectives, but also those that are not necessarily simply derivatives of one's own experiences, but of many others', too--there's comfort in that...if that makes any sense. Interesting.

Answer 2

Bit long for a limerick,

& no funny ending !

Answer 3

Though I'm not the religious sort, I like the ending twist on "cross" as an effective way of turning the tone of the poem into a hopeful one. The verses before that are somewhat creative, in a concrete way.

There remains the possibility, though, that it could be criticized for being Christian (believing in immortal souls), yet still expressing a belief that all within a person will one day die - unless this belief has been officially dispelled at the end of the poem.

Nice work.