Juneteenth Views

The sky is bluer than the flag below it;

The corn is greener than the cash it brings;

The clouds are decoration, and they know it;

The trees a fringe that to the edges clings.

The vision knit together is a wonder:

A countryside unequalled anywhere.

Let nothing that may come rend it asunder;

Let it remain forever whole and fair.

Yet mankind, who has set forth field and tree,

Will also threaten what has been created;

The corn a battlefield may sometime be,

If violence uncaged be not abated,

And bodies may be buried in the soil 

That once spoke to the beauty of our toil.

Amtrak

I really, really want to take the train.

I can't convey through text how desperately:

It scratches certain itches in my brain

To travel distance locomotively.

I have, in other countries, been transported

Across two hundred miles in two hours;

It was a case of see it, say it, sorted:

Yet here it seems forever past our powers.

We would bemoan the distances we cross

And claim it impossible to better;

Yet history reveals such claims are dross:

Our past did not experience this fetter.

I ask a simple question in this rhyme:

Can we not run a goddamn train on time?

Lilacs

No matter where I am or how I feel

No matter if the day was good or bad;

No matter what experience I had,

Or if the world around me seems unreal;

No matter if the sunlight seems to peel

The surface off my eyelids 'til I'm mad;

Or I conceive myself an undergrad

With hair unwhitened and a spine of steel;

No matter how I age or I decay,

No matter how I joy in my delights;

No matter if I struggle every day

Or wander wondering past wondrous sights,

The smell of lilacs, no matter how mild

Will bring me back to when I was a child.

Void

I do not mind the dark. Why should I? What

About the time of sleep and rest should be

A terror? Instead I find, deep in my gut,

A warmth, promoting my serenity.

I do not mind the light; it too is calm,

Not overheated and not overbright:

A source of joy and gladness, and a balm

To my desire to match day to night.

It is the interchange between the two

That makes the whole of my existence sing;

Neither exclusive, both with work to do:

A constant, intermingled, single thing.

Why should I fear the dark, or light? It's neither

That would be terror. I will live with either.

Cows

Assume, if you are able, that a cow

For every purpose of our calculation

Is spherical. Don't worry about how;

This is no matter for your perspiration.

It's merely an assumption we can make

To ease the calculations we must do;

A cow's a sphere; a ball, a point; a rake,

A line. We take them to be such because

The real truth of the friction and the angles

Is not the point of what this physics does:

Reality to often merely mangles

Pure kinematic truth and certainty:

Let life be perfect, cows live spherically.

All Good Gifts

If everything around us is from God

How can we discriminate between them?

The beautiful, the normal, and the odd

As we have lived, and loved, and seen them

Are equally of God; so is the pain,

The awfulness of every worsening day

That presses like a thunderstorm, the drain

Of walking weary under skies of grey.

If all of it is God's, how can we choose?

A holy favor means a holy fault.

The good we gain; the good we also lose

Collectively define divine gestalt.

And yet this does not mean we cannot tell.

It only means we must turn ill to well.

Prop

So many things would fall down without you:

The blanket pile, of course, you're nestled in;

The stack of books you're leaning on, a few

Scattered on top that you meant to begin;

The dog stretched out across your lap, still snoozing,

Her little limbs all flopped in full abandon;

The child beside you, obviously using

Your lap as a support for her to land on

Each time she bounces on the couch's springs;

The house itself, though that's a metaphor;

The very world, which only hums and sings

Because you're in it, I am fairly sure.

I know I'd fall, because, you know, I fell

Long years before: I fall with you as well.

Agit

Let us go then, out into the dark

And let the light within us make it bright.

Let us wander through a shadowed, empty park

Where no one else has dared to pass the night 

Dancing around trees that loom above 

Like silent guardians of the evening's grace

(Their roots sink deep, and show their endless love

For all the plants with whom they share the space).

Let us not resist the lure of going out

Simply because the outside is not home;

Let us push aside all diffidence or doubt

Of what might come when we begin to roam;

Let's imagine that the outside will be sweet

As where we come to rest our weary feet.

Age

Sometimes I want to freeze the world in ice

Like some immense Steve Rogers and exist

Forever in one moment. To throw dice

And never have them land; the morning mist

Still lingering, unburnt by coming day;

The puff of air exhaled before my face

Not yet dispeled; the sky the bluish-grey

Of early morning, when the clouds embrace

The rising sun, but are not yet outclassed.

I think, then, it would be a wondrous thing

If time stood still, and hours never passed

And you and I could couch a while and cling.

But if it had before, how would I see

The laugh lines from you laughing back at me?

Ignore

Pretend, if you would so much humor me,

That everything I tell you is a lie.

Imagine nothing that I've said, that I

Have whispered in the dark of night, to be

At all the truth. Declare the fallacy

Of all confessions I have made. Decry

The falsity of man, in me, and sigh

That nothing good is true. Please don't ask why.

I'd hate to lie again. Just let it go;

Believe this much of me, and think me so,

So we can free ourselves of what I've said.

It's better thus, and better you don't know 

The reasons. I won't jerk you to and fro:

Pretend, and let the past become the dead.