Wawayanda Sitting Bear November 4, 2017

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asking for the moon

Sharon says the moon looks worried

As if it is capable of human concern

As if it could ask the question

What are you people doing down there?

Watching the full moon rising after a short day

We walk in the twilight of the early sunset

Looking for turkey silhouettes in the trees

Thankful for a warm November evening.

The moon seemed so far away when I was a child

Before the distance became a short trip

Just a few days to get there and back

To see the hidden dark side for the first time.

Now my youth seems far away beyond reach

Existing perhaps as a figment of my imagination

Snippets of stories that surface into associations

Like myths of ancestral moons.

Sharon teaches basic literacy to adults

Women who were left behind in school

Learning a lesson this week about double vowels

Like good and moon sounding different but spelled the same.

While I teach numeracy to these same women

Thinking the language of math is easier

Having consistent rules with no exceptions

Necessary to engineer traveling to the moon.

The moon by any other name would pull the same

Tides twice a day rising and falling predictably

But the double vowel oo sound is older than history

A collective memory kept near enough to touch.

There is good reason to worry as we all know

When more of the same is making things worse

But the moon face that I see is happy enough

As if knowing people will realize how to end this madness.

You could say that we have a classical scale problem

When everything wrong stems from our spectacular success

Demanding a new form of organization for the public good

Don't you know that socialism is what must come next?

Harriman Green Pond November 2, 2017

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NYBG October 28, 2017

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