tried to kill my ego

tried to kill

my ego today

but he’s a tough

little bugger

 

I showed him

bee balm flowers

and golden lilies

bumblebees and

hummingbirds and

felt him

weaken

 

streams of clear

mountain water

and the smell of earth

and chanterelles

sent him into a

dizzy spell

 

the warm air

flowing down from

the green hills of

summer

lulled him to sleep

 

perhaps that’s

the best I can do

Reviews

[Eilis]

This is the second poem of yours where I see bee balm represented. That is a favorite flower of mine. It had sort of naturalized at my last home. It broke my heart to sell the house and leave my garden behind. Knowing the next owner was likely to plow over my wildlife beds and replace them with grass. And I was right. It was the first thing they did.

I do enjoy the teeming of the natural world in your poems. The good, bad, and ugly. My daughter loves dissections and microbes and viruses and through her enthusiasm I’ve learned to look at many things through a new lens.

You offer this sense of beauty, a sort of pastoral, idyllic scene. But as often happens, the mind intrudes. Marilynne Robinson has some interesting ideas about brain vs mind and how sometimes it seems people try to reduce the miraculous to something mundane in an effort to make it palatable or less threatening. Your poem made me think of that.

I am thinking if ego would be mind or brain or both. Perhaps like morality it can swing both ways. I suppose ego is a function of survival to some degree but it can escape its bounds and hinder growth or compassion or what have you.

The peace of the scene is comforting as I read, though, and that’s what I’ll walk away having absorbed.

[SkinlessFrank]

You are one of the most insightful readers here. You always bring something new to the table, and I enjoy hearing your thoughts. I was talking with a colleague the other day who is a behavioural biologist with a background in psychology. He is in the midst of writing a book on how humans, and especially human minds are imperfect; imperfect in the sense that they evolved to be large and good at solving the imminent problems that face us in surviving, but awful when it comes to dealing with the big questions about life and meaning that plague us.

[AYVID N]

It's interesting how nature worked in lulling your ego. In this, you used a simple concept to make a great statement and that's brilliant. Perhaps, for different people, different things may work, something that fills them with the joy of living and peace. Frustration just makes the ego a raving insomniac. Ultimately, only extremely compelling circumstances as terminal illnesses, extreme physical debilitation and proximity to the deathbed or some such others may minimize and kill it. You have such a way of saying something...

[Mary]

Frank, I think the way you personified Ego is perfect! Almost like a child, or a cranky old man set in his ways. Showing him that there is life and beauty all around him that is not of his own creation, that is Ego is not the center of what matters. the imagery and meter of the poem really sets a great tone Nice work!

[SkinlessFrank]

Thanks Mary. I've been thinking lately that ego gets in the way of so many of things that matter.

[Kenneth The Poet]

For a poet whose prose I've equated to the visual strangeness of Dali and Picasso, you write a rare optimistic, bright scene in the same great way. Your spoken style is enviable to say the least.

[Relic]

The majesty of what you describe along with its various elements are often enough to lull any ego asleep. This is so well written. I enjoyed.

[Chris Shaw]

I like the way you have used nature in this poem to get ego to do a rethink. I hope when he awakes he sees the world through different eyes. Nice work.

Chris

[Beccy]

Our misguided sense of dominant superiority over all else, versus the unassailable power of mother nature. No contest really.

Really enjoyed this.

Beccy.

[SkinlessFrank]

Thanks Beccy. You are spot on....she rolls right over us.

[sette]

i like the allegory of the poem how it can represent the ego through depicting nature