lester

connected meanderings
2006-07-07 17:33:09 (UTC)

New EPI poem: Perth and The Rest of Earth

erth and The Rest of Earth

A connected-by-email friend lives in antipodal Perth.
We joke upon a linkage through the very center of the Earth.

Perth, Australia, way down below, recalls for me a once
disturbing fright:
Waltzing Matilda – nuclear disaster reaching there – caused
a sleepless night,

For as the Berlin crisis loomed, we’d thought we’d just
move down under:
New Zealand, Adelaide, unclear, but down there, gone from
all gone asunder.

But that movie those years ago, in the sixties, told us,
told us with finality
How we all connect: you to me, me to you, us to them, yes,
to them, the enemy!

O, the answer then and now tells of including them,
eschewing any “themmings.”
Out-group labels can’t do it now, can’t do enemies, and if
we try, we’ll ape the lemmings!

We must laugh together now, sing, tell stories, bring all
under one tented Earth –
Even North Korea slinging missiles now – even North Korea –
must gain some worth.


Russell Gardner, Madison, Wisconsin, July 5, 2006




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