Briefly, very briefly, this morning’s sunrise was spectacular. Then the clouds finished closing in and the array of pinks and roses and tangerines disappeared. Speaking of the loss of vibrant colors, today is the final day of firearms deer season in our area. Tomorrow the fluorescent orange (and pink) goes back in the closet until next November. Now we can really focus on the reds, greens, and whites of the impending holiday season.
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Photo by J. Harrington
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As an early present to myself, and for which I’ll be truly full of thanks, I’m going to minimize the attention I pay to politics and world affairs for the rest of this year, unless the topic is something about which I can do something other than fuss and fume. I’ve let the crazy MAGAts squat rent free in my head too much for too long and I’m hereby evicting them. As insensitive as it may seem, the last time I read the Bible, it was full of stories of the peoples of the Mideast making war on and/or enslaving each other. So what else is new? I wonder if we could make current warring inhabitants of the region sit still and listen to all of the many, different, artists performing covers of Pete Seeger’s Where Have All the Flowers Gone?
A good part of the problem is evidenced in Congress and its continuing demonstration that it doesn’t take too many self-centered, greedy, extremists to wreck things for everyone else. When I was young, we used to refuse to play with kids like that. Why can’t “grownups” remember that lesson? Properly done, shunning, isolation, rejecting obstreperous obstructionists could have a beneficial effect on the rest of US and the world.
Gates of Eden
Written by: Bob Dylan
Of war and peace the truth just twists
Its curfew gull just glides
Upon four-legged forest clouds
The cowboy angel rides
With his candle lit into the sun
Though its glow is waxed in black
All except when ’neath the trees of Eden
The lamppost stands with folded arms
Its iron claws attached
To curbs ’neath holes where babies wail
Though it shadows metal badge
All and all can only fall
With a crashing but meaningless blow
No sound ever comes from the Gates of Eden
The savage soldier sticks his head in sand
And then complains
Unto the shoeless hunter who’s gone deaf
But still remains
Upon the beach where hound dogs bay
At ships with tattooed sails
Heading for the Gates of Eden
With a time-rusted compass blade
Aladdin and his lamp
Sits with Utopian hermit monks
Sidesaddle on the Golden Calf
And on their promises of paradise
You will not hear a laugh
All except inside the Gates of Eden
Relationships of ownership
They whisper in the wings
To those condemned to act accordingly
And wait for succeeding kings
And I try to harmonize with songs
The lonesome sparrow sings
There are no kings inside the Gates of Eden
The motorcycle black madonna
Two-wheeled gypsy queen
And her silver-studded phantom cause
The gray flannel dwarf to scream
As he weeps to wicked birds of prey
Who pick up on his bread crumb sins
And there are no sins inside the Gates of Eden
The kingdoms of Experience
In the precious wind they rot
While paupers change possessions
Each one wishing for what the other has got
And the princess and the prince
Discuss what’s real and what is not
It doesn’t matter inside the Gates of Eden
The foreign sun, it squints upon
A bed that is never mine
As friends and other strangers
From their fates try to resign
Leaving men wholly, totally free
To do anything they wish to do but die
And there are no trials inside the Gates of Eden
At dawn my lover comes to me
And tells me of her dreams
With no attempts to shovel the glimpse
Into the ditch of what each one means
At times I think there are no words
But these to tell what’s true
And there are no truths outside the Gates of Eden
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Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.
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