Dad recently messaged me with a few old poems from his youth, and I thought I would republish one here.
Bubbles
Never trust a bubble,
Though it bobbles in the air,
Or drifting gently there,
Does allure.
Though it twinkles in the light
With colorful delight,
Don’t be sure.
Though you very lightly grasp it,
Though you very gently clasp it
Like a dunce;
All at once,
Nothing first,
It will burst.
© James Monroe Clark 2021 (Written some time in the ’50s.)
My dad was a physics major at New York University and was a senior scientist at ITT, accumulating 44 patents over his time there. He was working on things like voice recognition and GPS long before these became common terms everyone knew. He also invented many things to help out the U.S. military and worked on a secure telephone that President Reagan used. Many who know him might be surprised at his artistic side, but he wrote a lot of poems in his youth.
I have a great aunt on dad’s side who had some accomplishments as a painter and poet. Below is one of her poetry books.
One Thanksgiving, a cousin on dad’s side, who has appointed himself as our family historian, shared all sorts of stories about Great Aunt Marie and showed me a different poetry book of hers that he has. I never met my great aunt, but I found it all fascinating. I Googled my great aunt and was surprised at what I found. I was able to order the book above from Amazon, which actually came from a used bookstore in California, and was even an autographed copy. I’ve been meaning to post about this in detail for a long time, so stay tuned …
