A poetic autobiography using a blend of prose and verse to describe Koenig’s initiation to a new life as a man and as a poet.
Jeffrey David McClough
Psychotherapist, New Mexico:
"A marvelous creation whose combination of poetry and prose are masterful and solidify the movement of (Koenig's) life story, touching (the reader) as only honesty and insight can. The revelations in An Invitation To Life are proof of the restorative power of creativity... and beauty."
Excerpt From Preface
"Not knowing why, since my mid-teens I have felt the strange need to write a story of my life. Now I realize my purpose was actually to find the way to a new life.
In order to relate this journey -- of my soul carried along inside the vehicle of my writing -- I first studied my journals and poems over thirty-five years, begun around age fifteen. I have come to believe, through the nearly ten years of constructing this book, that universal, natural stages of spiritual development can guide a person toward the life one's soul dreams of, and was born to live.
Hopefully this story, with evidence from my poems and journals, will support that belief, illustrated by the four phases of the butterfly's life cycle—egg, caterpillar, cocoon, and finally butterfly.”
Shedding Leaves to Wings
As the tree
Of my physical life
Sheds its leaves...
The leaves are forming
Around my aging body,
The brilliant scales
Of the wings
Of the butterfly
Of my soul's life,
And these, though seeming
To fall randomly,
Are landing in harmony,
As though each leaf
Were destined to alight
In the design
Of this unique butterfly. . .
Excerpt From Final Chapter
. . . traveling to sunlit Italy with Graciela, I felt myself becoming as joyful as I had always wished to be.
There, on the grounds of a villa by a peaceful sea, I finally read her An Invitation to Life from beginning to end. As she lovingly embraced all that I uniquely was, I began to feel securely at home in my own life. The same day I asked Graciela to marry me, and to my great joy, she accepted.
In the most beautiful garden in the world, two butterflies
Propose to love near the most beautiful flowers.