Description
It is Spring 2012 here at Fort Knox, Kentucky, and as I write this Forward
to my next book of poetry, GOLD VAULT OF POETRY, I can see all
new Army Housing that has been built on a one time golf course. Directly
behind our 2 story house is a former sand trap, I guess they were called,
at any rate, every time it rains it fills up with water, and suddenly we have
a rather medium size pond or small lake, until all of the residents call the
housing managers complaining, and they have to send the pumps out
and get rid of the water. I know about as much about golf as I do Free
Masonry, and I think it is planned that way. Robert Burns wrote a poem,
in which 4 lines are:
"May Freedom, Harmony, and Love
Unite you in the grand Design,
Beneath th' Omniscient Eye above,
The glorious Architect Divine . . ."
Those four lines are from his poem FAREWELL written in 1786. To me
these simple 4 lines reveal a true poet Divine; to others more knowledgeable
than myself, it reveals that Robert Burns was a Freemason, as was another
of my hero's, the singing cowboy, Gene Autry, and my own Daddy, Harry
Kilpatrick Wilson.
Beyond the new houses I see here on Fort Knox right now, there is a huge
water tower that is one of 3 such water towers serving our community of
Army Hero's and their families. And beyond that, about a mile and a half,
is the United States Gold Depository that is widely known as Fort Knox,
you pass it whenever you go onto Fort Knox at the Main Gate.
To me, a poet who is probably one of the most gullible and impressionable
poets in history, I was a little disappointed in the real thing, much like the
feeling I had when I saw the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia for the first time.
Neither of these two things were as Huge and Grand as I had expected.
But, like many things in life, it is a little misleading to say the United
States Gold Depository is "on" Fort Knox, as the Depository itself, is not
actually on Fort Knox, but government property adjacent to Fort Knox. I
do not know why people started calling the Depository "Fort Knox," but
the whole thing has me a little curious, and when I finish sending this
book to the Publisher, I may do some research into it. All of which has
nothing to do with anything, I suppose, but I won a beer in a bet a few
years back because I knew our Gold Depository is not actually on Fort
Knox.
And so I will change the subject to something else I know a little more
about, and that is how to write Poetry that many, many people love,
excepting many poetry critics, of course. So, I do not write for the critics
or the "tenure poets," but for you, everyday people who love the simplicity
of our lives and our planet. How I write poetry, and especially how I write
poetry in the Shakespearean Sonnet Form, my very favorite pastime, and
there are two locations on the Planet Earth where poetry flows like magic
from me, Fort Knox, Kentucky, and Doylestown, Pennsylvania, and
especially Doylestown, where it all began.