Van Saun Park October 10, 2019

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shadow outlines

His face fell off sometime in the night

Tumbling all the way down from the heights

An icon of rugged individualism gone now

The Old Man of the Mountain lost forever.

Not three years since the twin towers collapsed

Geologic time and contemporary events crossed paths

Granite stone standing untold thousands of years

Met the fractured fate of modern steel and glass.

Silhouettes of both remain as memorabilia

Remnants of an illusion of permanence

The way we go along from day to day

Until the earth shakes and the world erupts. 

Some think the revolution may never come

When the mass of people become an irresistible force

When the good of all triumphs over private profit

Doubting its inevitability though change is inexorable.

As the World Trade Center fell alongside Wall Street

Humbled by a scant handful with imagination

The toxic ash cloud of shock and awe in the air

Negated the fiction that the Empire is forever.

Those paired columns erected as a symbol of power

Ended up serving as a monumental gunsight

As the hijacked planes took aim on the target 

Attacking the finance capital that rules over us.

How quiet then the demise of nature’s monument

The emblem of New Hampshire my birthplace

Mourned sadly in stunned silence without blame or anger

Like a death we all knew would come one day.

Never expecting the downfall would be that day
Though the cracks were apparent for years

And the effort to shore it up had no way to succeed for long

The catastrophic moment takes us by surprise.

What happened to the Old Man was not an act of God

What happened to the WTC was not an act of Allah
What happens next is what matters most
Leaving behind the shadow outlines of the past.

lunch date

Six old white men sit down in a restaurant

Getting together congratulating themselves

And I am one of them at the table

Eating fancy food with fancy prices.

Three of us founded a software company

Sold last year for a pretty price

After many long years building it up

And the other three acted as advisors.

The menu is replete with exotic dishes

I need to lookup to know what’s in them

But the conversation is quite mundane

Males talking about sports and favorite teams.

My body is there but my mind is elsewhere

Downtown at the concurrent climate crisis protest

Where so many youth especially women have mobilized

Demanding urgent action to save the planet.

I saw them on the train going to the city along with me

Carrying their signs expressing their impatience 

Anticipating the energy of the massive crowd gathering

Demonstrating for a radical system revamp. 

Our little private gathering celebrates success in business

And no one points out the faults of capitalism 

Denying global warming while polluting for profit 

Ignoring the obvious, minimizing the impact. 

I say nothing to try to convince them otherwise

Knowing the material basis for their indifference

As if  they would let go of their privileged lives

For a cause that touches common people the most.

And am I any better as I sit there eating

Being mostly uninvolved, a bystander commenting 

Going about my usual daily routine, retired 

Hoping the next generation will make real change.

I must make the effort to be with those activists

To join with the many marching in the streets 

Organizing to put people and life on earth first

To take back the stolen future of our world. 

DeKorte October 6, 2019

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