Wednesday, January 18, 2017
How the American Dream Became a Nightmare
How the American Dream Became a Nightmare
We thought it was ours
to hold and love.
Land of the free,
home of the brave.
The founding fathers
and their wisdom
we fed to our children:
all men, etc.
Perhaps we forgot about those who
got left out,
had their lands taken away,
were put in chains or
made to labor in the fields,
long hours,
no pay,
lash on the back.
But for so many of us
it was tea time all
the time.
Fancy houses,
sleek cars,
fur coats and
diamond rings.
Even the rest wanted
what they did not have.
But something
got left out.
Something we
forgot we needed,
vital as air.
We lost the connection,
the one that keeps us
alive,
that reminds us that who
we are is not measured
by the number of cars
in the driveway,
how many bathrooms
our house contains.
Only now are we
beginning to wonder
what it is we lack,
what our shadow
is telling us,
the one we have installed
to lead us forward
next.
Beyond that shadow,
the light is waiting.
Let us enter together.
Dorothy Walters
January 18, 2017
This poem by Lisel Mueller suggests the way:
Hope
It hovers in dark corners
before the lights are turned on,
it shakes sleep from its eyes
and drops from mushroom gills,
it explodes in the starry heads
of dandelions turned sages,
it sticks to the wings of green angels
that sail from the tops of maples.
It sprouts in each occluded eye
of the many-eyed potato,
it lives in each earthworm segment
surviving cruelty,
it is the motion that runs the tail of a dog,
it is the mouth that inflates the lungs
of the child that has just been born.
It is the singular gift
we cannot destroy in ourselves,
the argument that refutes death,
the genius that invents the future,
all we know of God.
It is the serum which makes us swear
not to betray one another;
it is in this poem, trying to speak.
~ Lisel Mueller ~
