This poem was written for my step-son Josh for his 25th birthday:
Hirohito, Emperor Showa goes
and dies, some Eastern gods fail
no matter where the sun rise
sizes up the island chains, and
cold January rains.
To see in time a new reign too
from the USA, with a Vice President
shallowing in the shoals of the
Brave New World- where once stood
an actor, who was of course a run away
detractor.
But what changes this New Year brings,
and what spinning globe’s grinning
with the beginning of the end of so much
Like the slightest touch of rusted iron
fleeing Afghanistan, where Russian
was once spoken, a token of rubles
in rubble now broken
And spilled across the sound of
Alaska, natures bound to black and
tar; can of beer to the old man who
steers the Exxon Valdez to freeze
the blood of the seas.
So spoken of frozen in the Soviet Union
construction of the Golden Arches near
Lenin’s coffin, the melting Cold War
softens the New World Order
and Americanization across the
battered concrete partitions
falling in Berlin like heavy petals
of late fall flowers frozen in the wind
of history, this mystery
Where in Tiananmen Square
shows the tanks on television
the smear of human fear
splayed out far and near
but for human triumph in one
man standing there
Which brings us closer to now – full circle
in a Southern California beginning
where is born a baby boy to
a beautiful mother, maybe just
another human being, true.
But that baby boy was you.
Do something with this life
this gift, this magnificent chance
to change the ebb or flow of
time, to make an anchor
of this heavy rhyme
and LIVE! like a new island
just arisen in the stream.
That was then
this is now.
The Numinous Cosmos 