He keeps telling himself, 
     “You can’t control your dreams,” 
which should lead to the 
      truism that he can’t control 
much of anything except, 
      perhaps, 
his response to his dreams. 
      And he did just that the other night. 
His dream took him back thirty-years 
      to his 
             “Before-Death-Intruded” life 
and in his semi-sleep, 
      he felt his stomach tighten 
              and tears well. 
      “Well,” 
and with that he reached 
      over and hooked a finger 
in his wife’s shorts, sighed 
      and fell into 
               a slumberous sleep.

He’s watching Charade (1963),
the scene where the orange
is passed chin to chin and he

remembers his first summer
assignment in Astoria, NY
as a student minister and

having a party with the black
kids in the church and the
white kids up from a South

Carolina Presbyterian con-
gregation on a mission
trip and having them pass

the orange under their chin —
black kid to white kid and
back. The black kids were

fine with it and the white
kids said they would do it
but never, ever tell anyone

back home. That was 1967.
He wonders if those white
kids ever told anyone at

home. And if that one
game in 1967 made any
difference at all.

They wanted to ski
cross-country this New Year’s day;
cold got in the way.

Their legs coming back
for the winter wonderland
waiting for that day.

Unfortunately,
snow shuv’ling gets in the way
of skiing away.

He looked out the sliding glass door,
beyond his yard to the natural depression
next to his backyard neighbors’ house
and saw what looked like sledding

marks. He wondered who could have
made the marks because there aren’t
any children living on that street.
Later, his wife looked out the door

and saw children sliding down the little
hill. She said they must be the grand-
children of the new neighbors. He
didn’t look out but, nevertheless,

he saw a steep toboggan slide through
his closed eyes. Then he saw his
three high school buddies — Russ,
Terry and Big Dennis. They pulled the

sleds back up the hill and Russ and
Terry got on one and he and Big Dennis
got on the other. They took off together
but because of Big Dennis’ three hundred

pounds, the two soon passed Russ and
Terry. He shouted to them, “See you
later, losers.” Then they went for pizza.
He opened his eyes and shook his head

as he thought about Big Dennis who
died of a heart attack ten years
ago thus missing the fiftieth class
reunion. Dennis didn’t miss much.

I came across this poem at https://www.brainpickings.org/2017/01/31/protest-poem-ella-wheeler-wilcox-amanda-palmer/.

It offers prescient, poetic words for today’s need for protest.

Bob

PROTEST by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, 1914

To sin by silence, when we should protest,
Makes cowards out of men/(us). The human race
Has climbed on protest. Had no voice been raised
Against injustice, ignorance, and lust,
The inquisition yet would serve the law,
And guillotines decide our least disputes.
The few who dare, must speak and speak again
To right the wrongs of many. Speech, thank God,
No vested power in this great day and land
Can gag or throttle. Press and voice may cry
Loud disapproval of existing ills;
May criticize oppression and condemn
The lawlessness of wealth-protecting laws
That let the children and child bearers toil
To purchase ease for idle millionaires.

Therefore I do protest against the boast
Of independence in this mighty land.
Call no chain strong, which holds one rusted link.
Call no land free, that holds one fettered slave.
Until the manacled slim wrists of babes
Are loosed to toss in childish sport and glee,
Until the mother bears no burden, save
The precious one beneath her heart, until
God’s soil is rescued from the clutch of greed
And given back to labor, let no man/(one)
Call this the land of freedom.

It seems every female under thirty
sounds like Miley Cyrus,
even knowledgeable commentators
on events before us;
every female under fifty wants to
look like Ivanka Trump,
every male wants to be somebody tough
— in the eyes of females, bad boys, studly hunks.
Everybody wants to be somebody,
because, in this entertainment culture,
there, seemingly, is no authenticity.
Authentic, a word so great —
authenticus “coming from the
author, genuine…” — Latin Late —
the Author of Life, the one who
is the Word, who said,
“Let us make humanity in our image,”
the Imago Dei,
the image of love,
lived authentically, uniquely
by the creation each and every day.
And so, if we are to be ourselves,
who are we to be?
Who we are already —
our authentic selves — the Love
made for eternity.

The following is from Poem-A-Day. As I read it, I saw it as a prayer for our country.

Bob

December 31, 2017

Gitanjali 35

Rabindranath Tagore

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow
domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action—
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

About This Poem

“Gitanjali 35” was published in Gitanjali (Song Offerings) (Macmillan, 1913).
Rabindranath Tagore

Rabindranath Tagore was born in Calcutta, now Kolkata, in India, in 1861. His book Gitanjali (Song Offerings) (Macmillan, 1913) received the Nobel Prize in Literature. He died in 1941.
more-at-poets

Gitanjali
Poetry by Tagore

Gitanjali (Song Offerings)
(Martino Fine Books, 2015)

Help Support Poem-a-Day This Holiday Season

If you value Poem-a-Day, please consider a tax-deductible monthly donation or one-time gift to help make it possible. As the year comes to a close, we are raising funds to support this one-of-a-kind free series, which showcases hundreds of poems by today’s poets, as well as classic poems. Thank you!

He has always been an outlier
as he sees it now in hind site.
It used to be called the “black
sheep of the family,” and he

and his sister certainly were
that as the children of the
Swedish father intruder into
the covenant Dutch family.

Then so many years later
he and his wife sat at the
bar chit chatting with those
around the corner when

a former parishioner came
up to him and hugged him
and others followed behind
her saying, “We heard the

voice but didn’t recognize
the face,” which is now
absent of hair and then they
all joined in with a serendip-

itous, impromptu love fest.
They rose from the bar and
all hugged their former pastor
who was the one who made

all those outliers feel like
inside followers of Jesus
because, in his essence,
he was an outlier, too.

They laughed and hugged
and when he knew it was
time to go, he said, in
a moment of grace, “The

Lord be with you, “ while
making the sign of the
cross and all of them
standing next to the bar

responded, “And also with
you.” As he walked to his
car, he shed a tear of
gratitude that the outliers

recognized one of their
own.

Fire conjures many responses and reactions —
some warm and wonderful with memories — like campfires;
some warm and wonderful with thoughts of frigid nights — like a fireplace;
some wonderful memories of childhood — like fireflies;
some funny — like “liar, liar, pants on fire”;
some signifying courage — like “fire in the belly”;
some scary — like a spark flying from the fireplace;
some horrifying — like a “four-alarm-fire” on a wintry night;
some haunting — like the burning memory of tragic loss;
some metaphorical — like the fire on the edges of the Devil’s clothes; like hell, which, of course, is its own metaphor;
some a simile — like “the fire that burns clean through”;
It is never just what it is, is it — one of the four elements?
Are we ever just what we are — like the four elements or something else, too — like spirit?
Spirit conjures many responses and reactions — like….

He read the word “plinth” in a poem —
a foundation, a brick. In the backyard,

he had placed blocks under the monk and
Confucius, the Buddha already sitting

on a flat stone, all plinths — foundations.

The country, right now, where is the found-
ation, the block, the solid rock? With no

plinth — with no foundation upon which to
build a nation — plinth — a foundation,

a brick, a block, a rock, a place for
the nation to sit on a rock for a while

in security and tranquility and figure
out, like The Thinker, what to do with

futurity and posterity. What is the
country’s plinth, where is it, if we

sit will it still fit? The Constitution
and Bill of Rights — the “plinth,” on

this foundation, block, rock — demo-
cratic plinth — we still can stand.