James Kavanaugh
"America's Poet"

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James Kavanaugh for me is an inspiration. I grew up in a Catholic family and can understand how hard it must have been for him to leave the Priesthood and then to speak so contrary to basic Catholic tenants. Still he did so following one guiding principal. If there is one person you must be truthful with it is yourself. I wrote my first poetry after being inspired by Laughing Down Lonely Canyons and found a great deal of Inspiration in There are Men too Gentle to Live Among Wolves.  I have enjoyed everything I have ever read by James Kavanaugh and I feel anyone who enjoyed the work of James Redfield in the Celestine Prophecy books would as well.  I have included several of Mr. Kavanaugh's poems here along with exerts from the preface from Too Gentle to Live Among Wolves. I think you will see the First Insight and a few more without looking too hard. Also be sure to read my review of Books by James Kavanaugh   "I will probably be a searcher until I die and hopefully death itself will only be another adventure. To live any other way seems impossible. If anything has changed over the years, and it has, I only feel more confident now about what I wrote then. I am far more aware of the power that guides each of us along the way, and provides us with the insights and people we need for our journey. There are, indeed, men and women too gentle to live among wolves and only when joined with them will life offer the searcher, step by step, all that is good and beautiful. Life becomes not a confused struggle or pointless pain, but an evolving mosaic masterpiece of the person we were destined to become." James Kavanaugh Preface from Too Gentle to Live Among Wolves

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To

"A cat named Ralph who makes me laugh
and feel loved
And a tired old man who makes me cry
and feel helpless

But especially those

Who can hear the honking of geese
above the sound of traffic
Who can hear the weeping of boys
above the sound of mortars
Who refuse to take life as it is-
because it wasn't always."

Dedication from
Too Gentle to Live Among Wolves

There are Men Too Gentle to Live Among Wolves

"There are men too gentle to live among wolves
Who prey upon them with IBM eyes
And sell their hearts and guts for martinis at noon.
There are men to gentle for a savage world
Who dream instead of snow and children and Halloween
And wonder if the leaves will change their color soon.

There are men to gentle to live among wolves
Who anoint them for burial with greedy claws
And murder them for a merchant's profit and gain.
There are men to gentle for a corporate world
Who dream instead of Easter eggs and fragrant grass
And pause to hear the distant whistle of a train.

There are men to gentle too live amount wolves
Who devour them with appetite and search
For other men to prey upon and such their childhood dry.
There are men to gentle for an accountant's world
Who dream instead of Easter eggs and fragrant grass
And search for beauty in the mystery of the sky.

There are men to gentle too live among wolves
Who toss them like a lost and wounded dove
Such gentle men are lonely in a merchant's world
Unless they have a gentle one to love."

James Kavanaugh

UNAFRAID TO BE FREE

"Finally unafraid to be free,
Ready to surrender all the illusions of
recognition and external securities,
Living off the sky and earth like soaring
eagles and braying burros,
Trusting in a Power even beyond Dow Jones
and hoarded retirement.
Finally ready to live like the noble animal that I am-
Without masters or servants, with dignity dependent on no one,
Content to know that I am God's child, and
only good has been prepared for me.
When I am not afraid to release all that my life
and culture taught me to prize.
To abandon fears once and for all, to discard the
anxieties of a lifetime like a suit that no longer fits,
To be afraid of no one, beholden to no one,
dependent on no one
Save the few who know and love me as I am,
and the God Who alone gives meaning and joy
to the madness of my life."

James Kavanaugh
Books by James Kavanaugh