Around me you say to look —
the world is going to hell,
the climate has changed,
lovers of democracy have
become lovers of populist
autocracy, and there is
inflation, costing us more,
and crime costing the most,
and dictators making war.
As the ripples of words echo,
becoming rings in my coffee
and the aroma tickles my
brain gently and warmly
I hold tight my little
mug of peaceful-moment,
and all that matters, is to
taste the earth and water,
doing only what I can do.
There’s dangerous climate change,
there’s politicians stupid and strange.
There’s the horrors and death in war,
there’s those of dire needs to ignore.
There’s rights diminished and trampled,
there’s twisted surveys being sampled
for the sake of purported fight for right,
and for power which hides from the light.
And yet we live and love, build and yearn
for a better life we’ve done little to earn
by our social contract to one another
As we take from our sister and brother.
We know not what we’ve done in this age
of wealth, as we’ve turned into a sea of rage.
I fear we will drown each other in a roiling sea,
if we don’t help each other be the best we can be.
We must find reason in our heart and mind
returning to a world safer and far more kind,
where compassion and understanding reigned
and power for power sake is forever disdained.
There’s a story to tell you
too fantastic to be believed,
how a bag of subatomic particles
became a bigger bag of atoms
and then grouped into molecules,
which fit together sympathetically
and finding fortune in an amazing
path, transcending and transforming
and using abundant energy to win out
by achieving replication, a form
of immortality as others came
into existence and then flittered
out of existence all around it…
Winning out over all others
to evolve into a life form, or so
we would come to call it, with
survival instincts and time to
emerge with the ability to
understand this was something more
than others which threatened
or which were to be resources,
others which could not understand
the sun which came and went each day
the seasons changing, existence
being terminal, and social existence
having value to achieving immortality…
And so the story goes, this bag of
particles, began to tell its own stories,
began to imagine something bigger
in the form of dreams of something
fantastic, of something beyond
life as an understanding, as if
there were a path to another form
of immortality, as if there were to be,
something which could be created,
which would last beyond the days,
of all which lived at the time of
awareness, beyond moments of history,
beyond the horizons of tomorrow….
But alas as the story goes,
this was but a moment in time,
in a universe which hardly noticed
in small part of a world where
the story only has value
because it was shared, because
it would be recorded in memory
and it would live in the very atomic
elements, which hold the story,
and survives beyond the horizon of
tomorrow, to be found again as
hope for another story which
is yet to be written…
There is something magical
about changing seasons
the cool leading to cold.
The Northern Hemisphere
bending away in fall, then bowing
toward the sun in the spring.
Witness the vast climate change
in such a slight difference
in distance to our star.
How blessed we are to
be in this just right distance
from a stable burning star.
To experience an abundance
of life, to have the ability
to understand this reality.
Or may this be a random event,
as we find ourselves on a planet
wobbling a few degrees.
To also enjoy the fortune of
an android strike, which
gave the planet to us mammals.
And the vast time to develop
as sentient beings who can
understand how this all can be.
A blessing or an accident
matters not so much, but
that we appreciate our gift.
We appreciate the delicate
just right conditions for us
to witnessed the seasons.
We should take care of
such a wondrous gift, thinking
about it a little each day.
As we enjoy our seasons,
our blessings, our just
right gift of life.
Violently shaking the leaves
portend their end, the trees will
lose to the winds of future winter.
Violently we too will be shaken,
challenging our resolve, and the reasoned
may lose to the winds of the extreme.
A coming winter of brutal coldness
and harshness, these changes will be
unfair and deadly to the unfortunate.
We are destined to see these things,
as the powerful take dry weaken leaves
and build a fire to keep themselves warm.
But have faith for a spring of hope
where we are awakened to fight
for our right to grow and prosper.
And in the end we’ll sweep away winter
along with the ashes of fascism, as once before,
replacing it with a new summer of freedom.
Likely you’re reading via the convenience
of your phone, while I enjoy the largess
of my computer screen, and the
convenience of my keyboard
to write these musings.
I never spell ‘convenience’ correctly,
until just now because the computer
conveniently corrected the ‘convenience’
In the stanza above and thus it was super
convenient to have a properly spelled ‘convenience’.
It is a funny word, as you say to someone
“call me at your convenience,”
meaning… I’m not as busy
or important as you and I’ll happily await your reply,
even though it may be inconvenient to me.
Or, if you are a Brit, a convenience might mean
a toilet, which by now,… may be exactly
where you’d like to convey this musing, but if not
so inclined, I hope you find my musing
conveniently in reach of some thought
or another.
Does a tragedy mature or
is it’s overrun by others?
Growing into memory, fading
into subconsciousness, a fabric
weaved to bring comfort or
shield the blows of others?
More and new, and continuing
for so many, with lasting scars.
Scars which cannot be cut
again, and worse yet
the wounds which heal only
in the finality of the end.
And yet some will not know,
some not yet of age never
felt the shock, never felt the
pain and rage, but know it
though the next and future
tragedies of their lives.
Tragedy seems to mature in
its own way, changing the
world and us in the
crucible-melting of our
innocence, until hard
lessons-learned are forgotten.
We live in an age of miracles,
ourselves a miracle of evolution,
a miracle of randomness, and order,
surprises and opportunities.
We live with trials and failures,
recovery and retries abound,
the freewill to rise again, or
to fall into our own pit of pity.
We cheer the persistent,
the ones who fight through
their own faults and failures
to bring their own miracle to life.
We know randomness, as
well as order, and lean into order
as we are the product of miracles,
building upon the miracles of others.
I answered a question never asked,
thought something which never was.
Then wrote it on a page which
remained stubbornly blank,
and lifted into the sky while
held by gravity onto this Earth.
I held a book open to a page,
felt the words sear in my heart,
yet they painted no lucid picture
in my mind, as spirit of something
greater drifted by, somewhere on
high as gravity held me firm.
I then looked down and saw
it was good, it was home, it was
our Earth, and place to revere,
to grow things, ourselves, each other
to raise up. As gravity, in its way
brought me to my knees in prayer.
It is quiet this morning,
even the dog barking
down the street stopped
to listen to the nearly
soundless morning, of
the world keeping a
secret which must not
yet be told… only hinted.
Like there is something
more to come, something
more to know, something
more to be experienced.
Something which Nature
will keep a secret, until
we are finally told…
and certainly feel.