9 posts tagged “joy”

Sparrows in eaves,

mice in ceiling—

celestial music.

--Matsuo Basho

Together let’s eat

Winter wheat

Share a grass pillow.

--Matsuo Basho

Winter retreat—

the old pines traced

on the golden screen.

--Matsuo Basho

I am hopeful for my country in a way that I have never been.  Last night people partied in our street and around the world, from South America to Africa.  Fire crackers burst in the sky and people danced.  Today people are walking around in a daze of excitement.  This election was not stolen.  No dangling chads in paper!  No polling places corodonned off under false terrorist threats.  Although some good initiatives failed, the election was a sweeping success for the world and America. 

I temper my hope with a knowledge of our past.  My mother would weep over the assassination of Martin Luther King, Malcom X, John F. Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy, the best of the Kennedy brothers, often.  For years I didn't understand the apathy among older people, who felt their dream had been stolen, that a better America could never come.  Now, I wish some of them could wake up on this day to celebrate a new America. 

I temper my hope with a fear that it will be stolen again in a senseless act of violence.  Perhaps, though, this is a new era and I may dare hope that a new dawn is here for me.  I believe today that all Americans are my brothers and sisters. The last time I felt this connection with my fellow American, was after 9/11/2000. Instead of using the goodwill of the world to smash al Qaeda, the Bush regime went to war in Iraq, asking Congress to approve this after the fact. While we were shopping, which is what he told us to do, our rights were stolen. The War Powers Act crumbled first, then our rights to privacy. Big Brother has not been this big since the fifties. There has been a national joy.  Let no violence mar this evolution.  I hold this prayer in my heart. 

La

thinks the baby

I will eat the house

When it grows tiny

a lozenge on my tongue

it will cure aches

I will taste the trees

singing green
crack of wood

and bird bone

The sky will

fill my mouth

float me up

past blue

La

thinks the baby

I am that am

a burning bush

a bird of egg

a milk biscuit

1/21/2006 Lucy Simpson