once while walking here to there
i chanced to stop and rest awhile
upon a bench i’d never seen before
and as i sat many different kinds
of folk i watched pass by
till sat upon the bench near me
a man who said he’d crossed the pond
to see what life was really like
in our great land of canada
where’d he’d heard the streets were paved
with gold
i pitied him for traveling all this way
just to find our streets were like his own
then why he asked were we more rich
than he
to which i turned my pockets inside out
and watched one lonely coin fall to the ground
who tells such stories he demanded
i said i did not know
but stories such as his abound
whenever the world is not at peace
his world he said was not at peace
but filled with bickering politicians
who called each other names like little kids
and promised things impossible to deliver
though still they were believed
i said i too in such a world did live
but since my world was called democracy
and his a soviet socialist state
my people protested louder
and so they thought they were
more free than he
though really the truth was only
a matter of degree
where will it end he agitatedly asked
concerned about his child
whose picture he extracted
from a pocket of his shirt
i looked upon the smiling face
of a girl so sweet and young
her eyes still flashed the innocence
that life would soon corrupt
i pondered then if i should lie
and say a better world would come
one day
and this young girl could live
free from fear and undisturbed
by events beyond her ability to control
he looked at me
and saw within my eyes
the fear i had
his child and maybe mine
might someday each other face
across a war-torn battlefield
with rifles in their hands
and hatred in their hearts
he gripped my hand to show that if
this ever came to pass
he understood the cause would never be
such men as we
and we sat there holding hands
that bridged the gulf
at least for now
between two worlds so very far apart
and yet so near
and each in silence thought about
the things we both did dread:
and in my mind raged insurrection
and nuclear war
too terrible to describe
while in his mind did conflagration
and widespread natural disaster
rid the world of millions
upon millions of its inhabitants
until were left the chosen few
then did we leave
and walk both east and west
“and we sat there holding hands that bridged the gulf at least for now between two worlds so very far apart and yet so near”
Tenderness of the heart
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Coming home to a place one has never been before, yet knowing this is the home for which it was forever approaching, like a labyrinth.
A living magnet, unreachable, irresistable.
Imagining the unimaginable.
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