Driving into the Fog

Driving into the fog on a drizzly morning

when the sun stayed hidden behind a shroud

of moisture, white and wet and cold around me,

clinging, a shadowed world, unseeing,

I barely saw their movement, scanning

the road ahead, two young does suddenly appearing,

unsure themselves where to go, back or forward,

no clear direction, as disadvantaged as I,

perhaps, in our low visibility, caught unaware

and focused ahead on the edges around us,

blurry and still and thinly veiled.

Cautious, these two soft figures startled, me, too,

and I slowed quickly, just to see them dissipate

into the woods beyond, swallowed up, nothing to show

they’d been there, to mark their presence,

two specters returning to their own mystical world

I cannot enter, cannot follow them to in their leaving,

and I wondered if I’d even seen them crossing

my path, paved and easy and away

into the fog on a drizzly morning, wet and cold.

[untitled]

He grew up during America’s

then current war, the one

in Southeast Asia, Vietnam, the “police action”

of the time, and we protested, peacefully

or as violent as the war itself,

“hell no, we won’t go,” “make love,

not war” ... and then we grew up,

moved on, forgot even, but not him,

who served no time behind bars

or in front of a gun sight, slogging

through swamps and rice patties running red

with the blood of his peers, comrades,

who came home broken and rejected,

part of something he was not, never was,

nor part of some anti-establishment movement

with flags and fists and placards raised,

“sitting in, dropping out,” proclaiming peace

and love and simplicity, back to nature,

power to the people with the right to do as we pleased,

do our own thing, whether we should or not,

beating down the man who would constrain us,

hold us back, make us conform to a world yet unformed,

but he would not, could not, even when he tried;

for he was a quiet man, confronting no one,

raising no alarm, hating none, dreaming ...

as others have dreamed ... believing ...

as others have believed ... and waiting,

patient, his hand out to others to raise

them up, even as he faded into the background

that lay behind the new order, an ordinary man,

unassuming, apart, noticed yet unnoticed,

unknown really, an unknown man changed by circumstance,

making peace with himself in that world rocked

by the times, by all times, dreaming, believing, waiting.

And now, years later, other wars behind him,

other actions and reactions, rallies and protests,

progress and regression, he grows old,

tired, and the dream, perhaps, fades some,

when what we fought for then, Peace

and Love, a better time and place,

is as far away as it’s always been,

long before Southeast Asia, Vietnam,

before the wars to end all wars, I & II,

and the battlefields since, and he wonders

if mankind is hopeless, self centered, afraid

even to change, to grow, to begin

the healing process before us, confronting us,

or is it just giving in, mankind giving up,

fighting just to fight, meaningless words spoken,

making noise in a world of silence,

this silence we dread, perhaps, this healing silence,

if we’ll just listen to humanity calling,

or is it too late, he fears, even

as he reaches out his hand to others still,

raising them up, believing and waiting,

holding fast to a dream,

fighting to keep it alive.

Archeology

At the bottom of a shoebox

from some old pair I long ago outgrew,

or wore out with miles and miles

of walking through my life,

I found your picture, stuck,

not by glue, but by time and moisture

and the blue ink scrawled across the back,

letters and words now blurred together,

barely readable by my old bifocal-ed eyes,

head tilted back, peering down my nose,

drawing the photo closer, pushing it away

to make sense of these blue smears,

loops and swirls running together

Or washed away, a blue stain remaining;

my name stood out clearly, though,

as did yours, but like all the years

and miles in-between us then, too young,

and now, the words blurred, illegible,

just as our love blurred since we parted

and our lives went the way lives go,

on and on and on, and the picture became

an artifact of some ancient time forgotten,

buried now in ruins, grown over with the vines

and tangles I let take over in my leaving,

years and years of old growth obscuring,

covering, blotting out a time before

until this archeological dig in the ruins

of my own life, hacking through vines

and tangles, tearing them away, revealing

this shoebox holding you and a life we shared

before I left and the world changed us;

I’d forgotten this simpler time of love

shared in the innocence of youth

where what mattered most was us  

and being together and the world

was conquerable outside the bubble

we’d wrapped ourselves in, believing

ourselves immortal, but like the Incas

and Mayans and old Phoenicians

we died out mysteriously,

found, discovered, rediscoverd

years later in the bottom of a shoebox,

blurred runes on the back of your picture,

faded and creased, barely readable,

the crypic runes of what might have been,

ancient words of a time now gone.

Gettysburg Address

Johnny Reb was buried in a newly dug grave,

a family plot, gone now, the mansion, too,

burned in battle or collapsed with age.

He died and was buried there for the ideals

he held dear, values long held since birth,

ingrained enough to rise up against oppression,

under a new flag, seceding even as his forebears did

against an oppressive king, their voices unheard.

He died a hero’s death, respected, buried with honors,

for bravery, for sacrifices to a grand cause of freedom.

And he went where all heroes go, never knowing

how it ended, surrender and loss, his home

and his grave giving way to progress, a highway

speeding through, going nowhere, going everywhere,

or a high rise, a shopping mall, an unused parking lot,

vilified, offensive, a rebel to the nation.

He was a young man, then, idealistic, unifying

that nation still in his loss, his surrender of his life

for what he believed was right, believing enough to take up arms

against his brothers in blue for freedom, liberty and justice. 

These same ideals flowed as well through Yankee blood,

values long held since birth, ingrained, and lives sacrificed

to a grand cause of freedom, going too where heroes go,

never knowing; for life goes on, and progress moves us forward,

battles to be fought by idealistic youth armed today

as they were then, with their values ingrained since birth,

intact, believing: freedom, liberty and justice.