Good Timber

The tree that never had to fight
     For sun and sky and air and light,
But stood out in the open plain
     And always got its share of rain,
Never became a forest king
     But lived and died a scrubby thing.

And The Looting Continues

You wanna talk about Looting after Cold-Blooded Murder.
So let’s talk.

The neighborhood was Looted
Long before the windows broke
Long before the tear gas was thrown
Long before fire grenades flashed through the night
There was Looting
There has always been Looting
Since land, liberty, and life was Looted from the first people to live in this neighborhood,
The Looting has Continued

‘T’was A Month Before Christmas 2020’

T’was a month before Christmas,
And all through the town,
People wore masks,
That covered their frown.

The frown had begun
Way back in the Spring,
When a global pandemic
Changed everything.

Not Only the Eskimos

We have only one noun
but as many different kinds:

the grainy snow of the Puritans
and snow of soft, fat flakes,

Some Have It, Some Don’t!

Quincy Adams

It’s not easy to congratulate the winner, no matter if it’s a sports event or an election. Presumably that you gave your best best, it stings a bit. Dreams and hopes crumbled, we find ourselves questioning if we have done everything right.

About Democracy and Lizards

It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see…”
“You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?”
“No,” said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, “nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people.”
“Odd,” said Arthur, “I thought you said it was a democracy.”

Wordless Wednesday

England in 1819

An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying King;
Princes, the dregs of their dull race, who flow
Through public scorn,—mud from a muddy spring;

Sheltered in Place

You watch your boy struggle with giving
up the turtle, returning it to the pond
where he’d found it on a walk—
first time you’d all been out in days.

What Decency meant in 1886

“Civilized people must, I believe, satisfy the following criteria:

1) They respect human beings as individuals and are therefore always tolerant, gentle, courteous and amenable … They do not create scenes over a hammer or a mislaid eraser; they do not make you feel they are conferring a great benefit on you when they live with you, and they don’t make a scandal when they leave. (…)