Skylands July 22, 2019

album

get back

Back in the day when I was protesting

They yelled at us to go back to Russia

Sometimes hurling bricks along with the brickbats

Trying to bully us off the streets.

Especially when we stood with people of color

They hated us those lower class white men

Acting out the virulent racism of white America

Dupes ruled over by upper class white men.

Now I hear a similar hostile sentiment

Spewed from the mouth of the head of state

Inciting violence against people of color

Flaunting his racism out in the open. 

Being white and comfortable I could look the other way

The way that so many around me seem to do

But I believe in a better world where black and brown lives matter

Knowing what they do to any of us they do to all of us.

I remember when I first heard an old recording

Big Bill Broonzy playing a 12 string guitar singing

"If you're white you're all right; if you're brown stick around

But if you're black get back get back get back."

Today when I see that reactionary flag

The one with blue stripes approving police conduct

The everyday profiling the brutality the oppression

I know that person supports injustice.

The day will come when the tide of change surges in

Drowning the bigots with their heads in the sand

The future belongs to all the people of the world

Marching under the rainbow flag.

Marconi Beach July 19, 2019

album

the history of a place

Cranberry bogs and kettle ponds

Tidal flats and beach escarpment cliffs

Sandbar spits and drifted dunes

Placing us in a terminal moraine landscape.

The people living here since the end of the last ice age

Evicted from their land by the English invaders

Killed off by foreign infections and aggressor wars

Remain like ghosts with their place names as reminders.

Those were my ancestors who were the perpetrators

Something no one much talked about growing up

While going to Natick to swim in Lake Cochituate

No one knew what those native words meant.

There was a time when salt works were built here

And the houses mostly followed the salt box design

A time when the railroad transported shellfish

And the transatlantic cable station buzzed Morse code.

Now we ride our bikes on the former rail line

Visiting this place that holds a lifetime of memories

So many summers past layered with the present

Mingle with the history in the ground found here.

So relaxed and comfortable at ease in this place

I could be happy just spending my days here

Wading the shallows and walking the beach

Watching the shorebirds getting on with their lives.