The Collected Writings of Brian J. Mueller

A single poem, met at the right moment, can change a life.

Search and read all 1,834 pieces by Brian J. Mueller — 1,675 poems, 38 prose pieces, and 121 haiku from 12 published volumes. Free to read and share.

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A Book Called Being Alive

...a good winter read.

I’m trying to imagine my life
as Mother Earth understands it,
somewhere written brilliantly
in the introduction and afterword
of a book called Being Alive.

The real story is not
in the pages I’m searching –
the voluminous encyclopedias,
the epic poems,
the eloquent soliloquies,
or the steamy romances
which inevitably give way
to another long chapter.

The book before my book
and the book right after
are certainly much closer
to the truest sense
of being alive.

Yet there must be something
written in these yellowing pages
of my birth and of my dying
which God is wanting me
to read and to understand
as the loving reason my story
is worth writing at all.