My heart is hurting today
it may be selfish, some is selfless
lamenting about my life
how day’s gone by so quickly
my losses deeply felt of those I love
the pains and angst, the toils
of Mother’s journey
in giving us life
bringing us to a country
that dismissed us so readily
and now selfishly, I dwell upon
my diminished accomplishments
and how wasteful of time,
I’ve been
At the same time I’m cognizant
of those children in a baron land,
alone, their parents taken from them
either by famine or shells of fire
raining down upon them, excoriating
any existence of life’s growth
in the ground of their harried home,
where they sit alone without love,
without warm embraces,
never to know about ‘having’ or
not ‘having’,
and their tears no longer flow,
their body deplete of water,
their heart broken, no one
seemingly cares
I see an ant scurrying aloofly,
can’t get myself to stomp on it,
also my wife derides my inability to
use a fly swatter and cringes when
I catch them in flight releasing
them outside along with the moths
that smile at me when I open my
screen door to go out and visit
the aviary I’ve created, an abundance
of bird feeders and perches accumulated
and placed logistically so that I can walk
bare foot across my yard in mornings
providing my winged and terestrial
friends daily sustenance while
my two mini-poodles, Jules and Jaz,
nibble at my heels for they, too, enjoy
our morning’s paradise walk
Juxataposed, this very moment, soldiers
traverse foreign terrain with daggered
eyes following their every step,
beeds sweated fear under their fatigues
while finger on the trigger of the m16
at ready, ready to deploy death upon
unknown faces of ‘big’ and ‘little’ people
age is of no consideration to consequence,
only knowing he, our soldier, is in their
homeland and they wish to extricate
him through fear and death so he walks
softly, carefully, not to break the
eggshells underneath his every step
that may send him to his God
or back home lying next
to a buddy sharing stories
of where they lost their arm,
their leg, their other buddy,
commiserating how their family
of wife and children no longer in tact,
nor brother and sister, mother and father,
friends who don't understand
and a government, surreptitiosly,
has sent them to this hell
The black and white chickadees
tilt their tiny heads at me with a wink,
a tweet, the dark winged and rusty
robins are back, male cardinals
flaunt bright crimson attire
battling for feeders with blue jays
and starlings, taking turns
at the bird baths while unabashedly
bathing in front of others and now
I feel like St. Francis of Assisi
as I stroll back inside to finish my
toast with marmalade to sit
on my comfort chair and once again
live vicariously through my thoughts,
my words and that damn picture box
with audio carrying my emotions into
the tyranny whose worlds vary in ideologies,
philosophies, religiosities, and all
believing their’s, to be the ’one’.
“it is what it is”
