By NC Weil
In every community, at its heart
Is a person who either made it start
Or took it on as their own commitment,
To grow, sustain, to care what it meant.
For writers and songsters in Denver here
The man who stood in the middle is clear –
Ed Forrest Ward set up a venue,
Inviting us all to be on the menu –
Stories, Stories spread the plate
To write, to tell, to captivate.
You and Marcia reserved the Merc
And Imagemaker got to work
To craft the invites to us all:
“Fourth Tuesday – heed the siren’s call
Of voices varied, come and share.
Creative sparks will fill the air!”
So many have, for ten fine years
Embraced assembly with our peers.
Leading off with a Philly tale
Or seventies Denver: he’d unveil
A place we maybe thought we knew,
But from Ed’s unique point of view:
Gone in a Taxi to the Dark Side
Or with Lucia on a Pow-wow ride,
Or a ghost from a bygone neighborhood
The man in the attic lonely stood
And watched cops puzzling in the street –
Where can he be? He’s got them beat.
All through life your stories rose
Insisting to you: Stop! Compose!
Share your thought and incidents,
Steep them in your eloquence.
An impresario is one
Who trades in the phenomenon
Of gathering, and drawing out
The storytellers round about –
The songs, the memoirs, and the fiction
Made us richer through depiction –
The deadline looms to stand on stage
Painting us all another page.
Thank you, Ed, for the groups you founded,
Those magic nights we sat astounded.
And we remember, by the way,
That aphorism you liked to say:
“A contract with the muse is a contract for life”
You kept her happy – she’s been your midwife!
No comments:
Post a Comment