Poetry is Good for America
Frost
In the bleak winter
An invisible threat came
Isolating all
Bud
The middle of spring
People and flowers bursting
Contained no longer
Sunburn
The warm sun ripens
Messenger of the old gods
Bringing boys of summer?
Reaping
In Fall the Harvest
Rejoicing or full mourning
Bringing in the sheaves
Around Thirteen hundred and forty-five
In Genoa, a ship arrived
With sickly crew barely alive
Quayside the barque was ill at ease
The smell of death was on the breeze
A town brought down by rats and fleas
Bulbous from bacteria in the bite
Of the fleas put the metropole to flight
Initiating the darkest medieval fright
From Genoa like a martial plan
The plaque marched ruthless across the land
Soon to Florence and Milan
Civilization came unbound
A third of Europe could be found
Far too soon planted in the ground
The Black Death brought in its aftermath
A new human value that set the path
A society reforming millennial bath
A renaissance came to be
For learning, for arts, for industry,
The breaking of feudalism and the setting free
Of hearts and minds and the labor of men
The Disease is not how this story ends
Catastrophe allows for greatness to begin
The story is bleak but also true
Europe recovered and we will too
Perhaps to a renaissance anew
Let us not fear or worry or doubt
Let our revival be what we are about
To be better people when our plague plays out.
When your future is uncertain
And your world filled with stress,
Can you mitigate the worst,
And still work for the best?
Can you find hope and happiness
Despite the setbacks,
While girding yourself daily
For life’s constant attacks?
In your moments of sorrow,
Can you still find some ways
To look beyond the chaos-
See through to better days?
Can you view the great maelstrom
And recognize how the spin
Is nothing more or less
Than how opposing currents descend?
Our lifetime is a struggle,
From our birth to our grave,
But all that is required to live successfully
Is to stand and be brave!
So let the storms billow over
Till they lose power and end,
Hold on to your hope
And be human my friend!
Momma took the paper.
She read it every day,
And as she finished sections,
She passed them on my way.
For two bits and a little time,
The world became more clear,
(On Sunday it cost a dollar,
Because so much was there).
The paper came with sections,
So that all could clearly track,
The news, the sports, and classifieds,
Separating opinion from fact.
Section A was local features,
And section B straight world news,
Section O was all opinions,
Where people sang their blues.
The funnies and the classifieds,
Everyone knew were jokes,
That car was not at all “like new”,
The fancy personals- just regular folks.
Now the papers are slowly dying,
No one reads them like before.
And the people don’t know
Anything about anywhere anymore.
What used to be a quarter,
Now costs four or five,
Or else it’s moved behind a paywall,
To keep the press alive.
And instead of clearly marked sections,
Where people can evaluate and choose,
It’s now all fiery loaded language,
Infotainment dismissed as “Fake News”.
In the void of multi-media,
Talking heads just fight and fuss,
But the absence of real reporting,
Means the joke is on us.
There is no good solution,
Unless we the people act,
Dismiss celebrity talking heads,
And demand instead pure fact.
Though editorial and opinion,
Do indeed have a place,
It should not be amongst pure news,
As facts get lost in space.
The nation and its people,
Would be better in every way,
If we all took time and place and paper,
And read it every day,
And as we finished sections,
Passed them our children’s way.