Poem Before Breakfast

 

American symbols hug the land, standing out

Against the sky, despite new wars, new guises.

With intent look, we arm for struggle, swearing,

“How dare you alter my horizon, my skyline.”

 

My jumble of the days events in tumble order

Cannot reorganize the poem before breakfast,

Or even playback the innocence that has gone.

I have brushed the last blue stroke of daydream.

 

Options are different now, the future changed.

I tremble for my freedom, for what comes next.

Do I long for the old, free to be laid waste or

Learn to cherish a new prison that saves me?

 

Liberty loves our human imperfection, could not

Evolve without its blind quality, that kindliness,

So how do we perfect our freedom and security

Without putting an end to liberty as we know it?

 

I stare back at  images I fear will remain forever,

Raining down our dust and the metal of irony.

This thunder and horror is a personal attack,

And yet I reel as a torn world rallies within me.

 

If we do not walk this avenue of flowers and

Awake in its thickness of candles lining the way,

Crying aloud with a choking thirst for God, we

Will not touch this hour, nor mourn its passing.

 

A jumble of all my being tumbles over and over ---

And I can’t remember that poem before breakfast,

Or revive its warm air that we will surely need.

I cannot bear to read my summer’s day expressed.
 

 
music: Adagio for 9-11 © Suite No.1 in Ab
by James L. Warner, 1991 (renamed)