Lawrence Ferlinghetti decades ago wrote and it gives me chills to read it today:
“Pity the nation whose people are sheep,
and whose shepherds mislead them.
Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose sages are silenced,
and whose bigots haunt the airwaves.
Pity the nation that raises not its voice,
except to praise conquerors and acclaim the bully as hero
and aims to rule the world with force and by torture.
Pity the nation that knows no other language but its own
and no other culture but its own.
Pity the nation whose breath is money
and sleeps the sleep of the too well fed.
Pity the nation — oh, pity the people who allow their rights to erode
and their freedoms to be washed away.
My country, tears of thee, sweet land of liberty.”
― Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Author: lenwilliamscarver
A simple woman of simple means, walking a gravel road on my journey, made stronger by paths taken barefoot, pain endured, and revealed in these writings. Mistakes made some taught a lesson some lessons ignored, now learning to forgive myself.
GROWING OLDER
When do we realize how old we have become
Is it when we see the deep lines etched on our face
the dullness of hearing and eyesight
When the once ramrod spine begins to shrink
Is it when we feel our strength begin to wane
When each limb becomes stiff each chore
becomes harder due to the pain
In our youth, we failed to see how it would be
We believed the hype of”Golden Years”
Now we weep for the past our hearts stirred
by the melancholy of past years.
We live each day, long days
leaving us to wonder where did it go
Why are we left in this last stage of life
that seems to linger as we become numb,
frozen, hoping each day of pain will be the last?
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Traveler On the Backroads
I can hear the sun
touch the water’s edge
as daytime turns to dusk
in that magic moment
before evening falls
and the day is spent
.
you have to listen close
it’s softer than a whisper
as fragile as a dream
as quiet as an angel’s wing
but if you listen close
you can hear them sing
.
oh yes i can hear the sun
touch the water’s edge
*****I follow Michael on FB his poetry at times brings me to tears it is so beautiful and yes I am envious of his talent. follow him if you are so inclined. Tap the link at beginning of poem (in blue)
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First Day of Spring
The first day of Spring and all its promises…
Leaning against the window frame watching the sun come up
It rises gently as I drink from my emptying coffee cup
The brilliant cardinals flit in and out of the pine tree in the neighbors’ yard across
the street as the family of squirrels in my old oak begin to scurry about.
I stand there feeling happy and blessed although alone
then the neighbor to the east of me starts his Harley scaring the birds
the squirrels and me.
I turn with an obscene thought for him then smile knowing he will be gone
most of the day.
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Tonight I Cried
Tonight I totally lost all semblance of strength and just burst into tears. Not a day goes by I don’t think of my daughter, it’s seven years and the pan is as raw today as it was Feb 19, 2011. Generally, I can think of her with happiness and a bit of a trembling lip when the fact she is gone hits me. Yet tonight I lost it as if I had just received that horrible phone call. I know the agony of losing her will be with me until the day I pass away but Lord I wish it didn’t hurt so bad the majority of the time.
My immune system and other ailments have me weak physically and stress has had me for a really long time, depression as well. I just thought I was doing so well and if others were around and hubs weren’t asleep they would be putting me in a straitjacket.
I don’t know why I am writing this just needed to get it off my chest. I need no pity or comfort I just needed to write it.
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LOST TIME
The first day of Daylight Savings Time (DST), it is a dark, gloomy, cloudy day feeling like winter more than a nearness of Spring. I had hoped for a bright glorious day to give us all huge smiles. It would be a day with one less hour of the fake in the WH and his crew.
Instead, it was a day that had a ray of beautiful sun beamed through the window onto the hardwood floor, I would have tripped over it.
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Why The Best…
We place our hearts in the hard frozen ground
shedding tears over the coffin turning them to icicles to
melt and flow again, as they will time and again from this day forward.
We’ve placed the spray of flowers, plucking one or two as a
memento as if we should ever need reminding.
Young and old we put in beautiful boxes, subconsciously
believing the more beautiful the box the more others
know how deep our love.
We place them one at a time or 17, 26, or 100’s
No matter what has caused us to buy tiny plots of ground
all lined up with numbers and names individually or in masses.
Down into the hardened ground, the dark, to never see the light again Never to laugh, dance, love, live.
Fragments of dust, the best of us is gone.
So hard to accept, to cope, to understand
Why the best of us is gone.
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