Ruminations: stories, essays, and poems: poems

Ruminations is a collection of random, but sometimes related, stories, essays, and poems spanning a writing journey of over fifty years and encompassing the author's experiences in the military during the Vietnam War, a side diversion to earn a living as a practicing attorney, and then a writing career after he was paid to go away in a corporate merger. The hiatus from being a lawyer provided an opportunity to travel and reflect on life, and the end of life, and how his life had played out over time. These reflections, along with drafts of stories and poems and scraps of paper tucked away in a file cabinet, provide the grist and foundation for this collection.The Vietnam-era related works have common themes running through them, and all except the essay, "Vietnam Story," and the poem, "The Wench is Dead," were written in draft form while the author was in Vietnam or shortly after his return home and gathered dust until he turned to writing full-time. Each of the essays or creative nonfiction stories has its genesis in something the author experienced (e.g., "Strangers on the Appalachian Trail") or learned from his family history ("The Poisoning"). The fictional stories were inspired by a mélange of life experiences and observations and thinking "what if ..." ("Across the Divide") or by current events ("Break the Bubble"). The poetry comes from staring out windows and the author's love of irony, paradox, whimsey, allusion, and allegory. As stated in the first poem, "I Am Not a Poet": "I record impressions, images, ideas, conundrums, /if not from the heart, from the amygdala." For what they are worth, these are eclectic ruminations about life, love, death, and whatever else the author stumbled across over the last fifty years.