Once I wore armbands and marched with flowers in my hair -

 

Once I wore armbands and marched with flowers in my hair

Left the battle-ground tearing the nation and traveled to an island far from the hatred

sputum streets thronging there - 

Left my armbands, kept my flowers – found a place where there was pure treasure in simply living the hours –

Possessions were few and completely unnecessary when crystal waters flowed and there was gentle harmony -

Where I could in gentle frangipani breezes listen aware 

nod Bon voyage to other materialistic far off voices running the treadmill to nowhere –

 

I yearned for the peace, for the universal kindness connection and believed with allmy heart it would come to pass – that I could step out and into a worldly nirvana and without guilt let the years pass –

 

I inhaled sheer beauty each day, taught bright eyed little children their letters and numbers, bore a child of my own, sailed on boats, talked of the world through the night 

with those back from ‘Nam and those who had refused an unjust fight.

 

Once I wore armbands and marched with flowers in my hair

believed, in a new world order seeded, ready to blossom with care

 

It never occurred to me that once this movement danced and sang in ardent passion as one glorious teeming mass. 

All hues and beliefs marched, loved and lived in ardent certainty that we had breeched the stultifying morass .   

The beat went on and on and on nothing, absolutely nothing seemed out of scope. 

We brought wars abroad and home to a halt, everything seemed possible with this power of hope - 

and as all transpired and we rose above fallen and slain – 

burgeoned by new optimism, believed in all that the entire planet would gain.  

All the while of this time we listened, and respected the clarion call of Mother Earth – 

it never, ever, for an instant occurred to me that any of this could spin in reverse.

 

Now –

Many decades have flown and I am beyond all conceits - fully grown -the proverbial flowers have faded, dried and in the wind blown  – 

there is nothing as sad, depressing and desperate as aging in place – 

when there seems little hope sparkling on the horizon for this too often inhuman race – 

Too many overfed, privileged, greedy, and such, others struggling starving, the continuum vast and wide, 

Horrors spreading as a bloody overall haze, but worse, even worse than all horrors is this  heinous malaise

 

The malaise that accompanies the grim reaper calmly irrevocably counting out our days with a smile that is cold.   

We are old. We are old. 

Revolutions need the power of belief – need stable institutions against which to rail – 

we stand on unsteady limbs in the tarnish of age that is no longer gold 

too much that glittered steady in a state of declining or absolute fail–  

No, this age no longer gold we sputter and cannot find the words to inspire ourselves or the young -with the tales once told – of a time when belief in each other was strong – 

in the power of the people and the future in each song.

 

And yet, and yet through this fog of grim, dim, hopeless carnage and ache –

there are those crumbs of joy that still remain one day when the soul screams in hunger for pleasure to take.

 

And yet, and yet, moving out, and above, soaring from perspective on high, this may very well be a time when the poison of hatred toxic and putrid runs through the lands and eventually runs dry.  

Perhaps, if we rise, far beyond our elusive, impossible, dreams of individual change, we will see that the seas rising, the bergs melting, the temperatures, quakes, tsunamis, all sorts of catastrophic things are simply the water pounding the rock

 

 

The rock that is stuck in our throats and our hearts, the rock 

that seems to be an individual and global immovable block-  

but perhaps it is true – in a beat of the sand and sea 

that this revolution is a question of evolution whirling about us, confusing, us, into thinking that rapid change we shall see come to be. 

 

In the beat of the sand and the sea and all that shines through darkness – we are but a speck of stardust - but stardust collected illumes the darkness shooting light through - 

whether we shall see the ultimate cosmic revolution is beyond all we can possibly know. 

All we can grasp with both arms, a full heart and soul is that ..

We are the wave

We are the flow

and as Belafonte sang long ago 

... soon the rock must go -

Harry Belafonte - Paradise in Gazankulu