If you knew the future,
what would amaze you?
Tag Archives: inspiration
Reading Old Poets
Reading Old Poets
Before the words are spoken,
before a wheel has broken,
beyond the horizon of time
and in the far reaches of a mind
the story has been constructed and told
then reconstructed, so it never gets old
for the imprint of love on life is known
beyond anything the heaven’s have shown
to be the unchanged fortunes of a poet’s fate
no matter long-ago written or just-of-late
it becomes who we are and what we will read
beyond the horizon of a life we will lead
Waiting to be Found
Waiting to be Found
How many children are like spare change
Lost wherever guardians rested
Valued only when someone digs deep
Between the cushions of safety and horrors
Of cough drops, tissues, decaying food
Of violence and poverty and pain
To be found and pulled from oblivion
And with a bit of shine, to be a value
To be exchanged for sweetness
Of ideas of survival, of nobleness
Of humanity and inspiration
For those of us who never
Knew the pangs of being lost
On Optimism …
Optimism
Optimism is hope with probability
It is the fickle winds of fate
Shaped by the preparatory efforts
Of our mind and our soul energy
For the winds blow beyond our knowing
To faraway lands and return
For there is nowhere to go but around
And for this we can always count
On a chance, a choice, and return
In worship of hope shaped by optimism
Tomorrow…
The beautiful thing about tomorrow,
it means we have today!
Simple Joys…
Simple Joys
With voices loud and shrill
They scream at whatever they will
The sea and it’s waves roaring
The birds, slashing and soaring
The fish beneath the churning seas
As well as playing-chasing puppies
They scream for sheer joy
For a box they’ve made a toy
For stairs or hills and gravity discovered
Or for something they’ve dug and uncovered
And their joy echo’s in eager hearts of old
With long-forgotten simple joys re-told
Climbing…
Climbing
As I climbed a mountain
With a treacherous and uncertain path
I found too few rocks of interest,
I found too few flowers of scent
I was exposed to the day and night
I was aware of birds and critters
That passed me during exertion.
I knew of others on the climb
Those that led, sometimes made a path
Sometimes made me stumble with loosen stones
As I did for those that followed me.
I felt big and successful nearing the top
For then I slowed, noticing for the first time
That the world had many mountains
In a distance I could see
And the stars were close and bright
And there were rivers and lakes
And so much more I’d never known
And then I knew I was small
But happy to know that I was
This is One Way Mister
This is One Way Mister
I’m only going one way
I cannot go back I say
Until I go forward or around
If that is a way to be found
In a world of happiness and dreams
In life’s complicated streams
Can you believe in tomorrow’s ever
Changing possibilities or maybe never
It seems too outrageous to hope for,
Yet in its time it will knock on our door
As tomorrows always and sometimes seem never do
But this tomorrow means hope for me and you
If ill gotten reason left us today
Leaving us only one more way
To open this door to tomorrow
To embrace an enlightened morrow
The Train Called the City of New Orlean
I couldn’t get a song out of my head for several days… I find it nostalgic and haunting, written by Steven Goodman and made famous by Arlo Guthrie, called “The City of New Orleans”… for me it was as if the train was calling on America to think again about who we are and what it all means as we pass our five hundred miles of life. How we see each other and how we see the world we are leaving for others. The first verse I left the same, except Mr. Goodman described passing towns with no name, instead of trains as Mr. Guthrie recorded the song. The second verse is largely my fabricated notion of what a world we are in the afternoon of our lives. How we see others, how judgmental we can become, and how we should see rather the simple joy of kids that ask the engineer to blow his horn. The last verse, I changed from “Dealin’ cards with the old men in the club car… Penny a point ain’t no one keepin’ score” to reflect our current form of distraction, our smart phones, and I try to bring into the thought the memory again of being young and the joy of rocking babes to sleep. As we fade into our evenings of life what are we leaving for our grandsons and granddaughters… our dreams.
Good Morning America, How are you?
Riding on the City of New Orleans
Illinois Central Monday morning rail
Fifteen cars and fifteen restless riders
Three conductors and twenty-five sacks of mail
All along the southbound odyssey
The train pulls out at Kankakee
Rolls along past houses, farms and fields
Passin’ towns that have no names
Freight yards full of old black men
And the graveyards of the rusted automobiles
Good afternoon America, how are you?
Don’t you know me, I’m your native son
I’m the train they call the City of New Orleans
I’ll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done
And where were you
When the City of New Orleans came rumbling by
When all the towns and people seem
To fade into a bad dream
And the steel rails still hadn’t heard the news
A train can have the disappearing railroad blues
Don’t you recognize your native son
Why do you think you have to judge anyone
When they just would like you to listen to what they said
After-all they pledged a sacred allegiance just as you did
And those that came after with desire to be as one
With us in heart, sharing the dream of a native son
Regardless where they came from or where they were born
And the engineer waves and gives a blast of the horn
From his perch sitting way up high on the train
For children in their yards pulling an imaginary chain
Good evening America, how are you?
Don’t you know me, I’m your native son
I’m the train they call the City of New Orleans
I’ll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done
Sitting each with our phones, no one talking anymore
Playing mind numbing games, no one keeping score
Pass the filtered purchased water as world rumbles by
And grandsons of Pullman porters
And the granddaughters of engineers
Ride their father’s magic carpet of diesel and rail
Mother’s with their babes asleep
Playing mind numbing games, no one keeping score
Pass the filtered purchased water as world rumbles by
And grandsons of Pullman porters
And the granddaughters of engineers
Ride their father’s magic carpet of diesel and rail
Mother’s with their babes asleep
Rocking to the gentle beat
Dreaming of a peaceful moonlit night and quiet sail
Dreaming of a peaceful moonlit night and quiet sail
Good night America, how are you?
Don’t you know me, I’m your native son
I’m the train they call the City of New Orleans
I’ll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done
I’m the train they call the City of New Orleans
I’ll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done
Reflecting on Fate vs. Choice…
Life Stream
Bobbing in a stream of life
Turbulent in place, calm in others
Believing our choices are ours
Believing our paths are ours
That those that flow and weave
Through us and with us are theirs
And our choices
When the Earth was carved in serpentine
By the millions that came before
And the choices they made or did not
And the rocks we hurdle were smoothed
And made shiny by the blood of millions more
That tore their skin on the jagged challenges
As we are so often asked to contribute
So that we bounce together, and
Sway from east to west when we must
Thinking it was our own choice to
See the sunset
To have a stream of conscious
To find a quiet ride in the middle
And no longer work at carving the land
Or even to turn and swim upstream
Running into those that follow
Disrupting and distrusting
Instead of bobbling along
Enjoying the choices made
By and for us and for each other