It is Spring 2012 here at Fort Knox, Kentucky, and as I write this Forward to my next book of poetry, GOLD VAULT OF POETRY, I can see all new Army Housing that has been built on a one time golf course. Directly behind our 2 story house is a former sand trap, I guess they were called, at any rate, every time it rains it fills up with water, and suddenly we have a rather medium size pond or small lake, until all of the residents call the housing managers complaining, and they have to send the pumps out and get rid of the water. I know about as much about golf as I do Free Masonry, and I think it is planned that way. Robert Burns wrote a poem, in which 4 lines are: May Freedom, Harmony, and Love Unite you in the grand Design, Beneath th' Omniscient Eye above, The glorious Architect Divine . . . Those four lines are from his poem FAREWELL written in 1786. To me these simple 4 lines reveal a true poet Divine; to others more knowledgeable than myself, it reveals that Robert Burns was a Freemason, as was another of my hero's, the singing cowboy, Gene Autry, and my own Daddy, Harry Kilpatrick Wilson. Beyond the new houses I see here on Fort Knox right now, there is a huge water tower that is one of 3 such water towers serving our community of Army Hero's and their families. And beyond that, about a mile and a half, is the United States Gold Depository that is widely known as Fort Knox, you pass it whenever you go onto Fort Knox at the Main Gate. To me, a poet who is probably one of the most gullible and impressionable poets in history, I was a little disappointed in the real thing, much like the feeling I had when I saw the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia for the first time. Neither of these two things were as Huge and Grand as I had expected. But, like many things in life, it is a little misleading to say the United States Gold Depository is on Fort Knox, as the Depository itself, is not actually on Fort Knox, but government property adjacent to Fort Knox. I do not know why people started calling the Depository Fort Knox, but the whole thing has me a little curious, and when I finish sending this book to the Publisher, I may do some research into it. All of which has nothing to do with anything, I suppose, but I won a beer in a bet a few years back because I knew our Gold Depository is not actually on Fort Knox. And so I will change the subject to something else I know a little more about, and that is how to write Poetry that many, many people love, excepting many poetry critics, of course. So, I do not write for the critics or the tenure poets, but for you, everyday people who love the simplicity of our lives and our planet. How I write poetry, and especially how I write poetry in the Shakespearean Sonnet Form, my very favorite pastime, and there are two locations on the Planet Earth where poetry flows like magic from me, Fort Knox, Kentucky, and Doylestown, Pennsylvania, and especially Doylestown, where it all began.
About the Author: Early in his Kansas life, Ron Arbuthnot discovered that Dorothy, Toto, and the Yellow Brick Road are real. All he had left to do was find the Land of Oz, and it was a beautiful poet by the name of Maya Angelou who read Ron's early poetry, and she liked it enough to point Ron in the direction of Oz. Even more unusual was the fact that it was not the Tin Man, nor the Straw Man, nor the cowardly Lion that Ron Arbuthnot found were also real, but the very soul of another great poet, Edgar Allan Poe, whom Maya Angelou told Ron Arbuthnot that he needed to study. Which he did. The result is contained in most of the poetry in this very book. It is because Edgar Allan Poe will reveal his secrets of poetry writing to anyone who will give it and honest try. Ron believes that Maya Angelou knew this when she pointed in the direction of the Land of Oz. It is in us all.