Worth Dying For
“I’m not afraid of dying,” said
the bombed city mayor’s brother
who had returned to his native land
from the United States to defend
Ukraine from Vladimir Putin’s war
of aggression. “I’m more afraid
of losing,” added the bearded man,
with fire in his eyes, as he spoke
for the soul of his people who had
suffered under the Soviet regime
long enough to realize that personal
freedom was worth dying for.
Behind Closed Doors
and ten years, suffering all the slings
and arrows of outrageous fortune,
and becomes all that he can be, but
when he dies, he returns to the same
life to live again with all the knowledge
and wisdom of his former same life;
wouldn’t that be something? Maybe
this is what made Jesus Jesus, Socrates
Socrates, Shakespeare Shakespeare,
Newton Newton, Beethoven Beethoven,
Lincoln Lincoln, Churchill Churchill,
Einstein Einstein, Steve Jobs Steve
Jobs, and all great souls who changed
the world? Who knows what really
goes on behind closed doors?
The Dilemma of War
There is a bigger picture
that necessitates the experience,
the hurt, the pain, the grief, the suffering,
and the unconscionable will all play
their part in the cosmic game of life,
giving and taking, and taking and giving,
all for the sake of becoming who we are meant
to be, both who we are and who we are not,
our true self whole and complete
in our divine nature.
Her Most Burning Question
I read a poem by a brilliant young writer
(she studied under the great William Blake
scholar, Northrop Frye) who went on to write
poetry, stories, dystopian novels, essays, plays,
and other genres, and a line from one of her
early poems left an indelible impression: “All
we have is hope, but what hope is there?” said
the budding Casandra, whose dystopian novels
were made into movies. A very distinguished
woman of letters in her eighties now, with 72
books to her credit, she published her third
volume of bits and pieces that she wrote over
the past few years (2004-2021), and to my
surprise, she`s stopped despairing. “If you’re
not hopeful, it’s game over right there,” she said
to the Star reporter, for the third volume of her
collected works on the burning questions of
her life. “If we don’t try, nothing will happen,”
she amplified. “If we do try, we have a chance.
In order to try, we have to have hope. So there’s
no point not having hope. It is an inbuilt human
quality anyway. We are inherently hopeful,” she
re-iterated, holding on by her fingernails. What
a paltry distance she’s travelled to find an
answer to her most burning question!
