Forgetting 2019: A Poem

[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 forsome glimmers of good news, and felt stymied. Of course, here, there, everywhere there were glorious private exceptions, yet hovering over the public marketplaces ofthe world I cringe beneath menacing storm clouds and below chaos and misery, and catastrophes waiting to happen. It is 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
 
two centuries 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
 

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