"I AM: Proud"--Poet and Educator Phil Repko Presents a Plea, Challenges Old and Young

“Lion with Toy Sphinx,” oil, Joe Szimhart

Ed.: Interestingly, Phil shared that his poem "Pride" had been written just weeks before he received the "Call to Writers" for this season's "I AM: Proud" project. Wrestling on the seemingly contradictory feelings about the word provokes thought. In "Inheritance" and "Theodore Wilde," he again reflects on time's passing, memories lost in time, and the desire to hold on to present joys. Phil announced at Studio B's Writers' Reception that his first book of poetry will be available in coming weeks. Stay tuned. 

by Phil Repko

Pride

Distinctions, derivations, too, and nuance
Mean a lot – but why can’t all of us speak plain
And make the case we’ve got?
I know it goes before a fall, and often

It compels the user to his greatest feats,
Which it then undersells.
The stubbornness required to step up
In dire straits is closest cousin to the hubris

Honor replicates.
How is it Pride is deadly sin and something
To be feared? His brother, Courage, isn’t he
By self-same parents reared?

Inheritance

The challenge - when the grandpop
Slips the lad or lass a Kennedy half-dollar -
Is not in helping the old man
To bridge the gap of years
Between the grassy knoll
And the rise of ISIS,
--- not with the stepping stones
Of astronauts exploding
And towers falling ---

The impossible feat is to ask the lad
To lift the weight of a fifty-cent piece
And feel the heft of swollen Pride
In God and country,

To squint through the shine
Of silver dreams and Golden Deeds
--- and not to have him crumble -
When he comes to understand -
the
Unwieldy burden of his Pop-pop’s hope.

I have been playing a poem a week game for 2023. Here's one I think you will like... P.S. Theodore Wilde (Repko) Moser is the 6th of a potential 7 grandchildren.

Theodore Wilde

It’s hard to savor Now.
It always wriggles itself free,
Behind my back it giggles
While I’m walking. What I see
Is everything in front of me.
I feel the things behind.

What’s Now is singing nursery rhymes
While dirges loom. So, frankly I’m
Intent that up ahead, there lies
A recess yard with shady trees,
Where children play, but I am free
To catch my breath and drink it in.
The game I watch is where I’ll win.

But just as I can feel the hug
Of something like serenity,
My urgency exerts a tug
That drags me to uncertainty.
The effervescence here and now
Just bubbles over quietly.

No respite sits upon my lap.
No calm wraps hands within my palm.
No coffee break delays the march
To take the hill and play the part.

To savor Now is not just hard.
It’s quite impossible to slow
The second hand as it gives chase
And goes wherever it must go.

* Phil Repko is a career educator in the PA public school system who has been writing for fun and no profit since he was a teenager. Phil lives with his wife Julie in Gilbertsville and is the father of three outstanding children, two of whom are also poets and writers. He vacillates between poetry and prose, as the spirit beckons, and is currently working sporadically on a novella and a memoir.

Studio B has published 10 anthologies of poetry, prose, and art from local writers and artists in which more of Phil's poetry appears. Copies are available through Amazon and Lulu Press. Further details can be found on studiobbb.org.

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