No matter how beautiful
a single flower, it needs
others to make a bouquet.

No matter how magnificent
a stallion, it needs
others to make a herd.

No matter how industrious
a builder, they need
others to build a home.

No matter how learned
a student, they need
others to advance knowledge.

No matter how strong
a soul can be, they need
others to make a family.

No matter how we might
feel alone, we are not and
with others, we are humanity.

Calmness

Reflecting the morning light
the surface like a mirror of
all that surrounds.

The stillness is a mirage
of calmness, the surface
belies what is beneath.

Watch for a while and
see, the ripples and
waves of turmoil below.

There is something more
to life within this calmness
and it is just underneath.

Held there by surface
tension which appears
to us as serenity.

There is nothing calm
about this, and it’s right there
if you have eyes to see.

Sit still for a moment, and do
nothing.  It is difficult
but feel. Feel your life’s
energy wanting to run!

Change, movement, energy, life
experience, growth, transitions,
learn, lessons become wisdom,
constant change, more action,
life vibrant in youth, and young
you is alive in you, as is love!

Change and movement is life.
God is life revealing herself
in love, growth and wisdom,
and ever-lasting life energy!

Is like Haiku
few words with grand sky
just me and you. 

Is like a sonnet with rhythm and rhyme 
and beautiful sunsets revealed in time

In couplets of perfect harmony
letting each other know who we’ll be

Is like a free verse with no sense
no rhyme, just flowing feelings
of fear, of pride, of hidden
reason, and silly distractions
and experiences all not alike. 

I see not as words on a page
not as a novel to be read
Nor as poetry to be felt 

But something more ethereal 
something with tentacles touching
the universe, touching all of us

If we only had the words. 

On this day we celebrate our
Declaration of Independence nearly
a quarter of a millennial ago
from the tyranny of a King
the indifference of legislators
and the oppression of an
oligarchy.

And yet we are, today,
suffering an embrace of
tyranny from a new King,
the measured indifference of legislators
and the oppression of an tech
oligarchy.

But we have something this
time around, we lacked in 1776
we have the history and wisdom
of Washington, Jefferson, Madison
and Adams, as guideposts and
inspiration.

We have but to declare our
Independence in the example
of Patriot Forefathers!

If you had to predict
the future,
what would you say?
Would it be all about you?
Or about all of us?

If you had data and trends,
would you ignore them
and go with your
gut, or worse faith
in false prophets?

Would you believe,
what your friends say,
or would you research
and think deeply
for yourself?

Can you really
understand what
the world is doing
to itself, and would you
believe if you did?

If God came to you
and told you the truth
would you believe?
Or would you say
it can’t be true?

For if you don’t
see Him in each other,
if you don’t see Her in
mother nature, then
in what do you believe?

And what is the future
but the sum of the past
the present and the
faith of those with
love and hope?

Two poems I found extraordinary, one called “Risk” Elizabeth Appell in 1979 which exhorts us to risk change, to grow into our beautiful self, another called “The Rose That Grew From Concrete” by Tupac Shukar in the 1990’s tells of resiliency and determination, such that hope and beauty overcoming adversity… I’ve incorporated these two poems in this musing with some of my own poetry…

Blossom as Beautiful as You Can

For we are planted by
circumstance and the love
of those who bring
us life, and placed us in these
gardens of our minds.

Where the winds may
bend, the rain may bow us,
and the sun may hold us
in warm  soil
of our circumstances.

Risk

When it’s quiet in the morning like this
I hear only the birds singing to each other
as I listen for a holy-peace inside my head

I hear none of the voices of the oppressed
I hear none of the chants to would-be kings
I hear none of the violence within and among us
I hear none of the world’s fight for ideology and power.

I hear the healing hearts of fathers and mothers
who care for the happiness of their children
who worry if they are eating well and enough
who worry if they will find freedom and peace
in an uncertain future, where the world fights
for ideology and power.

But the birds start telling a story that says
we will be here long after you are gone,
long after you have destroyed what you will
long after you cease to voice your worries, and
long after your ideology and power fades.

For we’ve always been here… waiting for you
to come and go… and we do not care about
your ideology and power.