Best Hundred Thousand Poems
Each night
you dream
in fours or fives
or more--
hundreds of dreams a month,
thousands of dreams a year...
yet you think you've dreamt
only a few, and can scarcely
remember those--
where then are
those unknown dreams?
Are they hiding?
Hiding in a special place
within your unconscious,
that vast part of mind
lying iceberg-like
'neath the waves
of the knowing world?
Are those dreams
that came alive only
in the dark side of
your mind still there,
waiting patiently
to be known, known
by your sleeping soul
when it awakens
in the real world?
I have lived long enough
to have made over 100,000
of these little home movies--
will I ever get to see them again?
One first flight, Columbia’s name.
Seven souls aboard, bound for fame.
Six days, then ten, experiments thrive,
Eighty hearts of science, dreams alive.
Sixteen days, the Earth they skim,
Reentry calls—light fades dim.
Tick-tick, hiss-hiss, crack-crack—a sound,
A breach unseen, the heat unwound.
1.67 pounds, a foam unseen,
Pierced the wing, unstitched the dream.
40 miles high, the flames collide,
Mach eighteen, as heat did stride.
Mach fifteen—a fiery scream,
The air ignites, the fragile seams.
Seven names, carved deep in space,
Their sacrifice, a lasting grace.
At 9:00 a.m., a nation cried,
29 months, the fleet must bide.
Tick-tick, sigh-sigh, hush-hush—we wait.
Columbia’s legacy will navigate.
Eighty dreams and the minds they fed,
We honor the fallen, their voices not dead.
Four hundred thousand waking hours passed
A blink of an eye, it seemed so fast
Between when he was born to the month he would die
His mind replayed it as his sons gathered by.
He said "I raised you well, but there’s no rule
To prevent all mistakes, to foolproof a fool.
Jim, there was no advice I could share
You kept hitting walls where there was nothing but air.
And Greg, reality gave you a sharp blow
You fell for good looks, a person you didn’t know
Blind assumptions took you off reason's track
You filled blanks with wishes instead of with facts.
You both were naive, that was your curse
Didn't realize personality is so diverse
The rainforest may have species of very kind.
But vastly outnumbered by permutations of the mind.
Greg and Jim were dismayed, they sat on the couch
They had always seen dad as a lovable grouch
But all this negativity seemed surreal
At death's door, didn't he care how he made them feel?
Dad added, "I look back, no way to make amends
My life was a train wreck with doom to my friends
I criticize you, but I didn’t know me.
I failed life's tests, who I wanted to be.
Jim and Greg met each other’s eyes, unsure what to say,
The weight of his words would not soon drift away.
Then he grasped their hands, and gave them a smile
A boost better than words, if for only a while.
What would your therapeutic family do
with an extra eleven hundred thousand?
A surplus donated beyond perennial operational expenses
for birthing and maintaining healthy lives
and burying and repurposing nutritional death.
First,
Let's invite co-investors to take back ten percent;
a million will do peacefully fine.
I would take the first hundred thousand
to build an outside classroom,
a green sanctuary,
an outdoor cathedral
accessible to all our neighbors
to stop in
join our song and dance
then move on about their day
Or stay
to re-invest Earth-healing lifetimes
of interdependent democracy together,
liberal in unboundaried love,
conserving our most robust ecojustice investments
to enrich deepening yin
and widening yang
eco-villages,
and internal ego-sanctuaries
for healing past climate degeneratives.
One day
we'll decide to co-invest a long weekend
for cooperatively budgeting
how we will reinvest our remaining nine hundred thousand
in ourselves
with our neighbors
our network of eco-faith communities,
our international confederacy of tribes and species,
residential
and share-ride commuter communities
To repurpose our existing infrastructures,
our cooperatively owned and managed communication systems,
liturgical nutrition systems,
healthcare giving and receiving networks,
nutritional wealth co-investing secular guilds
and sacred unions
to not just pray for resilient energy democracy
and future trust
and love of contagious beauty
sung and danced
planted and harvested each re-springing EarthDay
and every secular/sacred
natural/spiritual
egalitarian/interdependent
ego-healthy/eco-wealthy
sublimely incarnate night
of neurological enspiriting repair
Projects redesigning ego/eco-therapeutic communities
with an extra eleven hundred thousand
for birthing and maintaining healthy lives
unburying and repurposing nutritional integrity.
So sad the day
five hundred thousand slipped away
too many names to recount
lost as the pandemic mounts;
some believed it all a hoax
anger, violence to easily provoked
but for those who've lost someone dear
the reality is quite near and clear.
Say your prayers as it begins to slow
and wiser minds with wisdom grow
facing challenges still unknown
this crisis on all the world is sewn
but mindful hearts and innocent souls
bear the lessons learned and truest goals
to breach the separate selfish yields
revealing the goodness in humanitarian appeals.
Some rhyme
Some need capitals, not capitols.
Some people can speak them.
Without knowing how to write at all.
If you use them, please spell them correctly.
I have no idea what I would do without them.
600,000 of them
And only one of me.
I am opening the dictionary right now.
I want to learn ten more.
Ten a day.
No, wait. I am old.
I had better learn twenty a day.
They are ready to be used.
Smiling from the pages of a Thesaurus,
Taunting me, laughing at my ignorance.
Yet free for the taking.