January 5, 2019
Prefatory Note
At this age, having exhausted prose options, I indulge myself during holidays, by sharing poems that seek also your indulgence. I searched 2019 for some glimmers of good news, and felt stymied.
Of course, here, there, everywhere there were glorious private exceptions, yet hovering over the public marketplaces of the world, I cringe beneath menacing storm clouds and below chaos and misery, and catastrophes waiting to happen.
It is with this spirit that I looked back on 2019, and yet reject despair, and pledge to fight for what I believe in 2020 with the conviction that it can happen, and of course should happen.
Forgetting 2019
asphalt rain
darkens green fields
eco-extinction
flares Amazon skies
fake leaders slithering
toward real dangers
hither and yon
seek safe havens
gated nations
hiding from truth
screaming ‘no’
migrants fleeing despair
pleading ‘please’
hiding from evils
Aung San Suu Kyi
defending genocide
this fallen Nobelist
broadcasting abroad
her deadly message
a century ago
Walt Whitman
arrived in our midst
singing aloud
bewilderingly
of America’s future
later lost to predators
seizing their loot
robbing the land
turning dreams
to wilting flowers
our grief becomes
a betrayed destiny
tainted at birth
natives driven
off their sacred land
of holy innocence
the trusted voice
of Toni Morrison
is gone not lost
if we listen
if we listen
if we listen
all not yet all
lost futureless
nested eggs contain
our only hope
of what may yet come
of what to renounce
let’s start with gold
then learn not to hate
keep love joy truth
if we listen
if we listen
if we listen
Richard Falk
Santa Barbara, CA
December 31, 2019
Photographics print © Jan Oberg
Forgetting 2019 added by JO on
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