A Poet's Journal: July 15th, 2013

July 15th, 2013

We say that a little attention is difficult to buy these days, but I wonder if it were not so at any other time.  There is nothing new in forgetfulness and our outward and glaring looks always come from the inside, so that before our attention has focused on something new, we are left to consider what other cause might give us satisfaction.  Yet what it is that we forget has led us into a position where our values and our beliefs are the ruling factors in what we give credit to, and what, in the end, holds our interest.  Attention, or attending to something, is no longer the care we give to it, to bring it within our well-being, but what must already be there for us to attend, giving faith to what is established, though it is only a seeming place of security.  There is but silence before us, and no applause, no cheering, no glory for he whom, artist or not, asks for a moment of attention in light of the care he has given to his own thought.

Douglas Thornton