Mary Patrick November 14, 2020

album

grazing the grass

Grazing the grass for breakfast

Eating the kernels of wheat

Ground into flour and cooked

Delicious staff of life

Enjoying sweet fruit as well

Inviting me to partake

A mouthful of ripened ovary

Container of seeds

A seed eater by choice

Favoring the beans and nuts

Along with rice and potatoes 

Excellent nutrition 

The leafy greens providing

Vitamins for good health

Roughage for good digestion 

Farm fresh food 

Grain cultivation made possible 

All the ancient civilizations 

Humans are primarily herbivores

Like all the great apes

I have lost my taste for flesh

The butcher shop smell of death

Though I would consume it

With no other option

A carnivore no more

A different sensibility

A kinship with animals

Feasting on plants

no going back

There is no going back

To a life of nostalgic innocence

As if that ever existed 

No matter how hard this is 

The worst part is knowing 

The worst is yet to be

Every day more cases than the last 

Increasing exponentially 

The virus running amok here 

Spread most by those denying facts 

With ideology running through it

Asserting their individual freedom 

There will be a reckoning 

That cannot come too soon

The success in China beckoning

Begging for comparison 

Why no universal health care

Why only medicine for profit 

Who benefits and who suffers 

Who holds the strings of power 

The changing of the palace guard 

Removing that erratic incompetent

In favor of mister diplomatic manners 

Does not alter the underpinnings 

The military industrial complex 

The worldwide imperialist hegemony 

The systemic racism and misanthropy 

Continue unchecked

Capitalism created global warming

Unabated pollution in all forms

Driven by business logic

Must stop now

Let us go then into the streets

Mobilize in massive demonstrations

Demanding an end to all that

To seize the day

good question

That's a good question 

My friend Jim asked

What he could possibly say

To change someone's mind

But I don’t actually know

How to turn someone around

Just that emotion prevails

Over reason and logic

Jim has so many questions

It can be a bit much at times

But if you let him go there

He will persist seeking answers

So I turned the question around

To hear what he would say

What it would take to decide

Something he believes isn’t true

Without going into details

About the specific example

He answered his own question

What determines his views

We learn from our sources

First from personal experience

Next from what our people say

Then from the media we choose

So if you are trying persuasion

Respect their learned life lessons

Share observations from your own life

To explain your different conclusions

The rest is argument butting heads

Reminding me of the expression

My mind is made up

Don’t confuse me with the facts