TO THE CANARY-BIRD a sonnet by Jones Very

I cannot hear thy voice with others’ ear,
Who make of thy lost liberty a gain;
And in thy tale of blighted hopes and fears
Feel not that every note is born with pain.
Alas! That with thy music’s gentle swell
Past days of joy should through thy memory throng,
And each to thee their words of sorrow tell,
While ravish’d sense forgets thee in thy song.
The heart that on the past and future feeds,
And pours in human words its thoughts divine,
Though at each birth the spirit inly bleeds,
Its song may charm the listening ear like mine,
And men with gilded cage and praise will try
To make the bard, like thee, forget his native sky.

When this author saddens because the caged bird sings, I disagree with him. Having heard varied, lilting, soaring and seraphic songs from my boxed canaries, I still rejoice that they shared their gifts with me. They ring in memory’s welcome ears.

ALL THINGS BRIGHT AND BEAUTIFUL

All thing bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful,
The Lord God made them all. Cecil Frances Alexander

Which one of these things is not like the other? The Lord God of course, denied is rightful place in (His) world. All things to progressive socialists like President Obama - great, small, wise and wonderful - are the result of scientific, chemical, biological and nuclear evolution and selection. The Lord God rendered irrelevant He can only ‘stand and wait’ for America to self-destruct.

Obamism re-defines the idea of a global electorate in which we citizens of the world are all in this economy together by insisting Americans share their guilt. It re-interprets the meaning of capital, any wealth capable of producing goods and services, by declaring selected things useful and useless. It re-invents our Constitution as a living and changing document to accommodate feelings and sensitivities of lawyers and judges.

Unless decreed as ‘correct’ by Obamaism, no thing bright, beautiful, great, small, wise or wonderful exists.

TO THE CUCKOO BY wILLAIM wORDSWORTH

(Which I too have seen resting on the grass)

O Blithe New-comer! I have heard,
I hear thee and rejoice.
O Cuckoo! Shall I call thee Bird,
Or but a wand’ring Voice?

While I am lying on the grass
Thy twofold shout I hear;
From hill to hill it seems to pass,
At once far off, and near.

Though babbling only to the Vale
Of sunshine and of flowers,
Thou bringest unto me a tale
Of visionary hours.

Thrice welcome, darling of the Spring!
Even yet thou art to me
No bid, but an invisible thing,
A voice, a mystery;

The same whom in my school-boy days
I listened to; That Cry
Which made me look a thousand ways,
Ion bush, and tree, and sky.

To seek thee did I often rove
Through woods and on the green;
And thou wert still a shop, a love;
Still longer for, never seen

And I listen to thee yet;
Can lie upon the plain
And listen, till I do beget
That golden time again.

O blessed Bird! The earth we pace
Again appears to be
An unsubstantial, faery place;
This fit home for Thee!

Wordsworth sees the beautiful bird as a metaphor for the golden, magical, youthful time of love.

THE OWL by Barry Cornwall

In the hollow tree, in the old gray tower,
The spectral owl doth dwell;
Dull, hated, despised, in the sunshine hour,
But at dusk he’s abroad and well!
Not a bird of the forest e’er mates with him;
All mock him outright by day;
But at night, when the woods grow still and dim,
The boldest will shrink away!
O, when the night falls, and roosts the fowl,
Then, then, is the reign of the horned owl!
He owl hath a bride, who is fond and bold,

And loveth the woods’s deep gloom;
And, with eyes like the shine of the moonstone cold,
She awaiteth her ghastly groom;
Not a feather she moves, not a carol she sings,
As she waits in her tree so still;
But when her heart heareth his flapping wings,
She hoots out her welcome shrill!
O, when the moon shines, and dogs do howl,
Then, then, is the joy of the horned owl!

Mourn not for the owl, nor his gloomy plight!
The owl hath his share of good:
If a prisoner he be in the broad daylight,
He is lord in the dark greenwood!
Nor lonely the bird, nor his ghastly mate,
They are each unto each a pride;
Thrice fonder, perhaps, since a strange, dark fate
Hath rent them from all beside!
So, when the night falls, and dogs do howl,
Sing, ho! For the reign of the horned owl!
We know not always
Who are kings by day,
But the king of the night is the bold brown owl!

King Obama, our bold, brown, enlightened owl, now doth rule America. Here are 4 thoughts from an economist Jude Wanniski in the late 1970's. "Elections are won by the right candidate given the information available to the voters." In other words, the media that controlled the information available to the voters in this past election, influenced the outcome of the election of Obama. "The progress of civilization is limited by the inability of political leaders to draw upon the wisdom of the masses." Obama was elected by a landslide of voters with compliant ignorance (not wisdom). "A decadent politician forces his ideas on an unwilling electorate for its own good." Our President continues to foist his progressivism upon the public which remains convinced his policies are for their own good. Lastly, what worried Wanniski was a political leader "trying to demonstrate that our American system of democracy is inferior, by causing an economic crisis among the people and in the world at large." Bingo! We’re in the TET, Obama’s manufactured, tough, economic times. The banking crisis (originally and on a continuing basis the fault of governmental interference) has conveniently become a countrywide crisis necessitating Obama’s apologies to the rest of the world.

THE BLUEBIRD by Emily Dickinson

Before you thought of spring,
Except as a surmise,
You see, God bless his suddenness,
A fellow in the skies
Of independent hues,
A little weather-worn,
Inspiriting habiliments
Of indigo and brown.

With specimens of song,
As if for you to choose,
Discretion in the interval,
With gay delays he goes
To some superior tree
Without a single leaf,
And shouts for joy to nobody
But his seraphic self!

It might occur to you, dear reader, that Americans never could have surmised that on November 2nd, 2008 they awoke to hear their new blackbird singing for no one but his seraphic self.

THE ROBIN by Emily Dickinson

The robin is the one
That interrupts the morn
With hurried, few, express reports
When March is scarcely on.

The robin is the one
That overflows the noon
With her cherubic quantity,
An April but begun.

The robin is the one
That speechless from her nest
Submits that home and certainty
And sanctity are best.

THE BELFREY PIGEON by Nathaniel Parker Willis

On the cross-beam under the Old South bell
The nest of a pigeon is builded well.
In summer and winter that bird is there,
Out and in with the morning air;
I love to see him track the street,
With his wary eye and active feet;
And I often watch him as he springs,
Circling the steeple with easy wings,
Till across the dial his shade has passed,
And the belfry edge is gained at last;
‘T is a bird I love, with its brooding note,
And the trembling throb in its mottled throat;
There’s a human look in its swelling breast,
And the gentle curve of its lowly crest;
And I often stop with the fear I feel,-
He runs so close to the rapid wheel.
Whatever is rung on that noisy bell,-
Chime of the hour, or funeral knell,-
The dove in the belfry must hear it well.
When the tongue swings out to the midnight moon,
When the sexton cheerly rings for noon,
When the clock strikes clear at morning light,
When the child is waken with "nine at night,",
When the chimes play soft in the Sabbath air,
Filling the sprit with tones of prayer,-
Whatever tale in the bell is heard,
He broods on his folded feet unstirred,
Or, rising half in his rounded nest,
He takes the time to smooth his breast,
Then drops again, with filmed eyes,
And sleeps as the last vibration dies.
Sweet bird! I would that I could be
A hermit in the crowd like thee!
With wings to fly to wood and glen,
Thy lot, like mine, is cast with me;
And daily, with unwilling feet,
I tread, like thee, the crowded street,
But, unlike me, when day is o’er,
Thou canst dismiss the world, and soar;
Or, a half-felt wish for rest,
Canst smooth the feathers on thy breast,
And drop, forgetful, to thy nest.
I would that in such wings of gold
I could my weary heart upfold;
I would I could look down unmoved
(Unloving as I am unloved),
And while the world throngs on beneath,
Smooth down my cares and calmly breathe;
And never sad with others’ sadness,
And never glad with others’ gladness,
Listen, unstirred, to knell or chime,
And, lapped in quiet, bide my time.

Pigeons roost in a barn within my view when I sit in my favorite reading chair. Yet I wish I could dismiss the persistent pain from the big O’s brooding care. The world I love is being turned upside down, spun in a 360 degrees reversal of fortune. Modern art will now hang in the White House, only modern interrogation methods of terrorists will now be employed, modern marriage will now be the capstone of a relationship, not its foundation and the modern definition of a maturity is now lost because adolescence extends into the 30's, 40's, 50's and beyond. America is now an ‘obomination’ all right. It’s a sadness worth brooding over with no solution in sight.

TO THE SKYLARK by William Wordsworth

Ethereal minstrel! Pilgrim of the sky!
Dost thou despise the earth where cares abound;
Or, while the wings aspire, are heart and eye
Both with thy nest upon the dewy ground?
Thy nest, which thou canst drop into at will
Those quivering wings composed, that music still.

To the last point of vision, and beyond,
Mount, daring warbler! - that love-prompted strain,
‘Twixt thee and thine a never-failing bond
Thrills not the less the bosom of the plain;
Yet mightst thou seem, proud privilege! To sing
All independent of the leafy spring.

Leave to the nightingale her shady wood;
A privacy of glorious light is thine,
Whence thou dost pour upon the worlds a flood
Of harmony, with instinct more divine;
Type of the wise, who soar, but never roam,-
True to kindred points of Heaven and Home.

To Wordsworth the skylark represents parenting and motherhood at its best. But then Wordsworth’s words were usually worth pondering. Our big Obama’s words are worthless.

THE EAGLE by Alfred, Lord Tennyson

He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world, he stands.

The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.

A man becomes a leader by popular acclamation if he has a vision which answers a need, deeply and widely felt, and if he has at his command the language which makes people realize how deeply and widely they feel their need of the vision. Such a leader may be the most dangerous and seductive of animals. He is a man of political ambition who professes to be, and convinces the public he is, above ambition and politics. THIS IS PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA our regal eagle who has swooped down to take America.

THE SWALLOW by Charlotte Smith

The gorse is yellow on the heath,
The banks with speedwell flowers are gay,
Th oaks are budding; and beneath,
The hawthorn soon will bear the wreath,
The silver wreath of May.

The welcome guest of settled spring,
The swallow too is come at last;
Just at sunset, when thrushes sing,
I saw her dash with rapid wing,
And hailed her as she passed.

Come, summer visitant, attach
To my reed-roof your nest of clay,
And let my ear your music cath,
Low twittering underneath the thatch,
As the gray dawn of day.

As fables tell, an Indian sage,
The Hindustani woods among,
Could in his desert hermitage,
As if’t were marked in written page,
Translate the wild bird’s song.

I wish I did his power possess,
That I might learn, fleet bird, from thee,
What our vain systems only guess,
And know from what wild wilderness
You came across the sea.

Yes, our barn swallows also have returned to our country residence as of Mother’s Day, May 10th, swooping and signaling with squeaky twitters. Vultures, however, enjoy a year round stay. They cruise the thermals above our home reminding me of our Big Brother government, ever vigilant to strip away another ounce of free flesh from its citizens. Whatever we can eat, drink, smoke, wear, drive, buy, watch, hear, see, caress or smell is already regulated and restricted. Whatever government subsidizes, supports, excuses or fosters in this ‘bailout era’, on the other hand, is out of our control. smokeandmirrors.con, ( my version) should be the new Website for a government sponsored program for residential portfolio holders that will "monetize your residential mortgage." Need any further proof of the need to rid ourselves of the irresponsible Big O and his Washington liberal elites - a clan of vultures flying over our heads?

TO A SEABIRD by Bret Harte

Sauntering hither on listless wings,
Careless vagabond of the sea,
Little thou heedest the surf that sings,
The bar that thunders, the shale that rings,-
Give me to keep thy company.

Little thou has, old friend, that’s new
Storms and wrecks are old things to thee;
Sick am I of these changes, too;
Little to care for, little to rue,-
I on the short , and thou on the sea.

All of thy wanderings, far and near,
Bring thee at last to shore and me;
All of my journeyings end them here,
This our tether must be our cheer,-
I on the shore, and thou on the sea.

Lazily rocking on ocean’s breast,
Something in common, old friend, have we;
Thou on the shingle seek’st thy nest,
I to the waters look for rest,-
I on the shore, and thou on the sea.

A great writer like a great speaker is verbally agile. Words are interchangeable, however, for a charismatic speaker. Their potency lies not in their meanings but in the patterns they cut into the air. Therein lies the danger. The most dangerous man masters ambiguity but executes his policies with clear, unhindered power.

THE CHAMBERED NAUTILUS by Oliver Wendell Holmes

This is the ship of pearl, which, poets feign,
Sails the unshadowed main,-
The venturous bark that flings
On the sweet summer wind its purpled wings,
In gulfs enchanted, where the Siren sings,
And coral reefs lie bare,
Where the cold sea- maids rise to sun their streaming hair.

Its webs of living gauze no more unfurl;
Wrecked is the ship of pearl!
And every chambered cell,
Where its dim dreaming life was wont to dwell,
As the frail tenant shaped his growing shell,
Before thee lies revealed,-
Its irised ceiling rent, its sunless crypt unsealed!

Year afer year beheld the silent toil
that spread his lustrous coil;
Still, as the spiral grew,
He left the past year’s dwelling for the new,
Stole with soft step its shining archway through,
Built up its idle door,
Stretched in his last-found home, and knew the old no more.

Thanks for the heavenly message brought by thee,
Child of the wandering sea,
Cast from her lap, forlorn!
From thy dead lips a clearer note is born
Than ever Triton blew from wreathed horn!
While on mine ear it rings,
Through the deep caves of thought I hear a voice that sings;

Built thee more stately mansions, O my soul,
As the swift seasons roll!
Leave thy low-vaulted past!
Let each new temple, nobler than the last,
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast,
Till thou at length art free,
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life’s unresting sea!

Wow! Alliteration and the sweet suggestion to grow as one lives. Not in my neighborhood. I heard on the radio a local park is sponsoring "recreation accessibility day!"

SONNET TO A CLAM by John Godfrey Saxe

Inglorious friend! Most confident I am
Thy life is one of very little ease;
Albeit men mock thee with their similes
And prate of being "happy as a clam!"
What though thy shell protects thy fragile head
From the sharp bailiffs of a briny sea?
Thy valves are, sure, no safety-valves to thee,
While rakes are free to desecrate thy bed,
And bear thee off - as foemen take their spoil-
Far from thy friends and family to roam;
Forced, like a Hessian from thy native home,
To meet destruction in a foreign broil!
Though thou art tender yet thy humble bard
Declares, O Clam! Thy case is shocking hard!

Double meaning is implied in the last line about the hardness of the clam’s shell and the difficulty of making a case against the consumption of delicious clams. Double meaning can also be taken
in his reference to no safety valve rescuing a clam from its fate in the boiling pot. Rhyme scheme abbacddceffghh. Rhythm the traditional iambic pentameter, short long, short long etc. as in prate of be ing hap py as a clam or ... life...one...ver...lit.. ease. The fact that Saxe uses a formal poetic form like the sonnet to consider the life and fate of clams ( tender and hard) adds interest and lightness to the poem.

As an aside, Plato rated wisdom, temperance and courage - in that order as goals of good men.
Aristotle rated temperance, courage, practical wisdom and justice - in that order as the goals of good (educated) men. Plato and Aristotle are dead. Who are our living white, male thinkers?

THE HOUSEKEEPER by Charles Lamb

The frugal snail, with forecast of repose,
Carries his house with him where’er he goes;
Peeps out,- and if there comes a shower of rain,
Retreats to his small domicile amain.
Touch but a tip of him, a horn, - ’tis well,-
He curls up in his sanctuary shell.
He’s his own landlord, his own tenant; stay
Long as he will, he dreads no Quarter Day.
Himself he boards and lodges; both invites
And feasts himself; sleeps with himself o’nights.
Chattels; himself is his own furniture,
And his sole riches. Whereso’er he roam,-
Knock when you will, - he’s sure to be at home.

Children and wee-minded adults can enjoy this poetic observation by Charles Lamb about a snail, but self-sufficiency is also a Victorian’s (like me) first, middle and last name. Republicans could well re-name and re-invent themselves as the Victorian party. Yes, a true conservative (like me) upholds Victorian values: faith, thrift, discipline, patriotism, responsibility, stability, innovation, entrepreneurship, sexual continence, martial fidelity, parental control and social cohesion. Liberals, on the other hand, whether Democrats, progressives, socialists, Fascists, collectivists, radicals, activists, or even libertarians, can only pervert the meaning of any Victorian tenet they claim to make it their own. Napoleon Obama (from AMERICAN FARM) proceeds down the path of destruction or ‘modernization’ of Victorian living.

MALDIVE SHARK by Herman Melville

About the Shark, phlegmatical one,
Pale sot of the Maldive sea,
The sleek little pilot-fish, azure and slim
How alert in attendance be.
From his saw-pit mouth, from his charnel of maw
They have nothing of harm to dread,
But liquidly glide on his ghastly flank
Or before the Gorgonian head;
Or lurk in the port of serrated teeth
In white triple tiers of glittering gates,
And there find a haven when peril’s abroad,
An asylum in jaws of the Fates!
They are friends; and friendly they guide him to prey,
Yet never partake of the treat-
Eyes and brains to the dotard lethargic and dull,
Pale ravener of horrible meat.

Think of Big Brother Obama’s government as the ravener Maldive shark and dependant citizens as pilot-fish, hangers-on, not only beneficiaries of its protection but also (unfortunately) non-participants in the insatiable, bounteous feeding frenzy financed by taxes and penalties. America is still America. 17 roller coasters are at just one amusement park in Ohio. 88 million crazies paid to vote in the semi-final of American Idol. Shareholders ( the actual supporters ) of GM receive only1% of ownership in the out-of-court revamping of the company’s bankruptcy plan. The good, the bad and the ugly continue to be mish-mashed in our brave, new Obama world.

THE CROCODILE by Lewis Carroll

How doth the little crocodile
Improve his shining tail,
And pour the waters of the Nile
On every golden scale!

How cheerfully he seems to grin
How neatly spreads his claws,
And welcomes little fishes in,
With gently smiling jaws!

A children’s poem, yes, but also a reminder of our lean and hungry progressive President Obama (and his fellow administrators) who like the amphibian, has an unending appetite for dominion. We little people are the fishes; he is the big, croc with appealing smile.

THE SNAKE by Emily Dickinson

A narrow fellow in the grass
Occasionally rides;
You may have met him, - did you not,
His notice sudden is.

The grass divides as with a comb,
A spotted shaft is seen;
And then it closes at your feet
And opens further on.

He likes a boggy acre,
A floor too cool for corn.
Yet when a child, and barefoot,
I more than once, at morn,

Have passed, I thought, a whip-lash
Upbraiding in the sun,-
When stooping to secure it,
It wrinkled, and was gone.

Several of nature’s people
I know, and they know me;
I feel for them a transport
Of cordiality;

But never met this fellow,
Attended or alone,
Without a tighter breathing,
And zero at the bone.

Was she a geek or a brainiac in today’s politically correct re-named world, our Emily Dickinson? Her unique and introspective ‘takes’ on the natural world, on life, love, death, war and God will continually startle and please her readers. But she never met our leader, Obama, to whom her final reptilian words apply. I’ve heard this fellow’s speeches and attended to his socialist pronouncements; consequently, I’m breathless with fear ( like Emily) and zero at my bone.

THE COPPERHEAD by Bret Harte

There is peace in the swamp where the Copperhead sleeps,
Where the waters are stagnant, the white vapor creeps,
Where the musk of Magnolia hangs thick in the air,
And the lilies’ phylacteries broaden in prayer.
There is peace in the swamp, though the quiet is death,
Though the mist is miasma, the upas-tree’s breath,
Though no echo wakes to the cooing of doves,-
There is peace: yes, the peace that the Copperhead loves!

Go seek him: he coils in the ooze and the drip,
Like a thong idly flung from the slave-driver’s whip;
But beware the false footstep,- the stumble that brings’
A deadlier lash than the overseer swings.
Never arrow so true, never bullet so dread,
As the straight steady stroke of that hammer-shaped head;
Whether slave or proud panther, who braves that dull crest,
Woe to him who shall trouble the Copperhead’s rest!

Then why waste your labors, brave hearts and strong men,
In tracking a trail to the Copperheads’s den?
Lay your axe to the cypress, hew open the shade,
To free sky and sunshine Jehovah has made;
Let the breeze of the North sweep the vapors away,
Till the stagnant lake ripples, the freed waters play;
And then to your heel can you righteously doom’
The Copperhead born of its shadow and gloom!

The deadly copperhead lurks in and attacks its victims from the privilege of shade. In his poem, Bret Harte utilizes a double entendre on the word copperhead and the analogy of the slave whip, prevalent in his day. Our millennium copperhead, Obama, the Sophist, also strikes at the hearts and free minds of Americans from the cover of the darkness of relativity. For Obama there is no sunshine and sky, no openness and truth. All is relative. All is done under cover of darkness. Like a true Sophist, Obama seeks only power, not truth, justice and the American way based on the freedoms of our Constitution. He cannot be ‘eliminated’ except by exposure of the enlightened. He will continue to do his ‘work’ if complacent Americans peacefully acquiesce to his rule.

THE BLINDMEN AND THE ELEPHANT by John Godfrey Saxe

It was six men of Indostan
To learning much inclined,
Who went to see the elephant
(Though all of them were blind),
That each by observation
Might satisfy his mind.

The First called broad side a wall
The Second the tusk a spear
The Third the trunk a snake
The Fourth the knee a tree
The Fifth the ear a fan
The Sixth the tail a rope

Each disputed loud and long...
And all were in the wrong!

So, oft in theologic wars
The disputants, I ween,
Rail on in utter ignorance
Of what each other mean,
And prate about an elephant
Not one of them as seen!

Let’s remember the simply ludicrous Obamabots ( politicians, media and citizens) when the black elephant is in the room! No one sees his schemes or hears his trumpeting calls. Like the politically correct, euphemistic phrases now in vogue such as a ‘resource management co-ordinator,’ no definition from our bull leader on the liberal savannah fits that which is being defined.

GRIZZLY by Bret Harte

Coward, - of heroic size,
In whose lazy muscles lies
Strength we fear and yet despise;
Savage, - whose relentless rusks
Are content with acorn husks;
Robber, - whose exploits ne’er soared
O’er the bee’s or squirrel’s hoard;
Whiskered chin and feeble nose,
Claws of steel on baby toes,-
Here, in solitude and shade,
Shambling, shuffling plantigrade,
Be thy courses undismayed!

Here, where Nature makes thy bed,
Let thy rude, half-human tread
Point to hidden Indian springs,
Lose in ferns and fragrant grasses,
Hovered o’er by timid wings,
Where the wood-duck lightly passes,
Where the wild bee holds her sweets, -
Epicurean retreats,
Fit for thee, and better than
Fearful spoils of dangerous man.
In thy fat-jowled deviltry
Friar Tuck shall live in thee;

Thou mayst levy tithe and dole;
Thou shalt spread the woodland cheer,
From the pilgrim taking toll;
Match thy cunning with his fear;
Eat, and drink, and have thy fill;
Yet remain an outlaw still!

AND PLEASE PASS THE GREY POUPON! The ‘dangerous man’, the ‘cunning’, Presidential ‘pilgrim’ taking his toll, the ‘robber’ whose exploits ‘soar’, the plantigrade extracting ‘fearful spoils’ who must ‘levy tithe and dole,’ with ‘whiskered chin’ and strength - I despise. As hero of our country’s White House, he treads upon Americans’ freedoms not in ‘solitude and shade,’ not a coward like Harte’s grizzly, but with cunning, without fear, proudly and ‘undismayed..’

TO MOTHER TIGERS

To the mother tigers over time, defenders of their young like the cat carrying her kittens, one by one from the burning Pentagon on 9/11. Luckily, she was observed, acknowledged, rescued (with her beloved litter) and recovered from her injuries, a testament to the forever maternal.

Tiger! Tiger! Burning bright,
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burn the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare seize the fire?

And what shoulder, and what art,
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand and what dread feet?

What the hammer? What the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did He smile His work to see?
Did He who made the Lamb, make thee?

Tiger! Tiger! Burning bright,
In the forests of the night
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

William Blake

COYOTE by Bret Harte

A nice, trusting, gullible American "couldn’t help but believe" Obama as he spoke about 9/11 and the terrorist attack on the USS Cole. Why? Obama sounded so sincere and dad so wanted to feel better about his son’s death. This is what’s wrong with our country - blind, ignorant trust. Ignorance also refused to recognize leaders that ignore the ‘black’ problem in America ( pun intended). By a ratio of 4777 to 727 per 100,000, blacks are in our jails. 38% of a population of only 13% are in jail. A third of black children born in 2001 have a chance of incarceration. Why have the ‘new deal,’ the ‘great society,’ ‘the new frontier’ or the ‘great society’ not helped? Why have blacks only succeeded when they have helped themselves? Our culture, our societal norms and our moral imperatives have hindered them. Our government has been the problem, not the solution.

Blown out of the prairie in twilight and dew,
Half bold and half timid, yet lazy all through,
Loath ever to leave, and yet fearful to stay,
He limps in the clearing, an outcast in gray.

A shade on the stubble, a ghost by the wall,
Now leaping, nor limping, now risking a fall,
Lop-eared and large jointed, but ever alway
A thoroughly vagabond outcast in gray.

Here, Carlo, old fellow,- he’s one of your kind,-
Go, seek him, and bring him in out of wind.
What? snarling, my Carlo! So even dogs may
Deny their own kin in the outcast in gray.

Well, take what you will,- though it be on the sly,
Marauding, or begging, - I shall not ask why;
But will call it a dole, just to help on his way,
A four-footed friar in orders of gray!

Harte compares the coyote to a begging friar; why not compare blacks on the fringes of our society to hungry coyotes. Hungry for what? Oh please!

TO AN INSECT by Oliver Wendell Holmes

I love to hear thine earnest voice,
Wherever thou art hid,
Thou testy little dogmatist,
Thou pretty Katydid!
Thou mindest me of gentlefolks,-
Old gentlefolks are they,-
Thou say’st an undisputed thing
In such a solemn way.

Thou art a female, Katydid!
I know it by the trill
That quivers through thy piercing notes,
So petulant and shrill;
I think there is a knot of you
Beneath the hollow tree-
A knot of spinster Katydids,-
Do Katydids drink tea?

O tell me where did Katy live,
And what did Katy do?
And was she very fair and young,
And yet so wicked , too?
Did Katy love a naughty man,
Or kiss more cheeks than one?
I warrant Katy did not more
Than many a Kate has done.

Dear me! I’ll tell you all about
My fuss with little Jane,
And Ann, with whom I used to walk
So often down the lane,
And all that tore their locks of black,
Or wet their eyes of blue,-
Pray tell me, sweetest Katydid,
What did poor Katy do?

Ah no! Living oak shall crash
That stood for ages still,
The rock shall rend its mossy base
And thunder sown the kill,
Before the little Katydid
Shall add one word, to tell
The mystic story of the maid
Whose name she knows so well.

Peace to the ever-murmuring race!
And when the latest one
Shall fold in death her feeble wings
Beneath the autumn sun,
Then shall she raise her fainting voice,
And lift her drooping lid,
And then the child of future years,
Shall hear what Katy did.

All about lost youth, isn’t it? Secrets left hidden and unspoken. Sweet images of mystic memories past. A common grasshopper monopolized the pen of a poet even for a brief, wordy interlude. I recall 4 words that monopolized a country, Great Britain, at the beginning of World War II.. Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister, called for "blood, tears, toil and sweat," to help England maintain her glorious status. I wish to suggest 4 words necessary for America today to recapture her glorious past ( now being lost UNDER OBAMA’S DICTATORSHIP ). Citizens need to "think, work, save and invest, " each effort a metaphorical, mental countenance of blood, tears, toil and sweat.

THE FLY by William Blake

Little fly,
Thy summer’s play
My thoughtless hand
Has brush’d away.

Am not I
A fly like thee?
Or art not thou

A man like me?
For I dance,
And drink, & sing;
Till some blind hand
Shall brush my wing.

If thought is life
And strength & breath,
And the want
Of thought is death;

Then am I
A happy fly,
If I live
Or if I die.

My experiences with flies and over 25 different breeds of cats, have allowed me to think and conclude that death and destiny are common denominators but variety is the spice of life.

If Western civilization could survive and flourish after 1000 A.D. and the triple threats of the Viking marauders, Magyar horsemen and Muslim pirates, can we after the turn of the second millennium overcome the suppression of the Redistributive State (ala Obama)? The main causes of unemployment exist: excessive union wage-rate, minimum wage laws, excessive and prolonged unemployment compensation and generous relief payments - each program unimaginable and anathema to a Medieval world. The seeds of our corrupt destruction persist: a baby tossed out of car windows, instead of impaled on a sword and a vain women painting her nails crushing an innocent bystander, instead of trampling her under hooves. Time for an Emily Dickinson poem about a perennial, welcome guest.

THE BEE

Like trains of cars on tracks of plush
I hear the level bee:
A jar across the flowers goes,
Their velvet masonry.

Withstands until the sweet assault
Their chivalry consumes,
While, he, victorious, tilts away
To vanquish other blooms.

His feet are shod with gauze,
His helmet is of gold;
His breast, a single onyx
With chrysoprase, inlaid.

His labor is a chant,
His idleness a tune;
Oh, for a bee’s experience
Of clovers and of noon!

THE CRICKET by William Cowper

Little inmate, full of mirth,
Chirping on my kitchen hearth,
Wheresoe’er be thine abode
Always harbinger of good,
Pay me for thy warm retreat
With a song more soft and sweet;
In return thou shalt receive
Such a stain as I can give.
The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy... Henry Hazlitt , 1946
Thus thy praise shall be expressed,
Inoffensive, welcome guest!
While the rat is on the scout,
And the mouse without snout,
With what vermin else infest
Every dish, and spoil the best;
Frisking thus before the fire,
Thou has all thy heart’s desire.

Though in voice and shape they be
Formed as if akin to thee,
Thou surpassest, happier far,
Happiest grasshoppers that are;
Theirs is but a summer’s song,
Thine endures the winter long,
Unimpaired, and shrill, and clear,
Melody throughout the year.
"Demagogues can be more plausible in putting forward economic nonsense from the platform than the honest men who try to show what is wrong with it." Henry Hazlitt, 1946
Neither night nor dawn of day
Puts a period to thy play:
Sing ten- and extend thy span
Far beyond the date of man;
Wretched man, whose years are spent
In repining discontent,
Lives not, aged though he be,
Half a span, compared with thee.
"Conservatives, libertarians, and other defenders of free enterprise are becoming more outspoken and more articulate. And there a many more of them." Henry Hazlitt, 1946

It’s 2009! Given real, enemy conditions in Obama’s house, I’ll still champion the cricket.

A NOISELESS PATIENT SPIDER

Let’s follow America’s best (Emily) with her second-best poet, Walt Whitman - or is it the other way around? No matter, the facts of life might be conservative according to Margaret Thatcher, but the effects of great verse are liberal, liberating, and radical.

A NOISELESS, PATIENT SPIDER by Walt Whitman

A noiseless, patient spider,
I marked, where, on a little promontory,
it stood isolated;
Marked how, to explore the vacant, vast surrounding,
It launched forth filament, filament, filament,
out of itself’
Ever unreeling them - ever tirelessly speeding them.

And you, O my Soul, where you stand,
Surrounded, surrounded, in measureless oceans of space,
Ceaselessly, musing, venturing, throwing - seeking the
spheres, to connect them;
Till the bridge you will need, be formed-
till the ductile anchor hold;
Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere,
O my Soul.

THE BUTTERFLY'S DAY by Emily Dickinson

From cocoon forth a butterfly
As lady from her door
Emerged - a summer afternoon -
Repairing everywhere,

Without design, that I could trace,
Except to stray abroad
On miscellaneous enterprise
The clovers understood.

Her pretty parasol was seen
Contracting in a field
Where men made hay, they struggling hard
With an opposing cloud,

Where parties, phantom as herself,
To Nowhere seemed to go
In purposeless circumference,
As’t were a tropic show.

And notwithstanding bee that worked,
And flower that zealous blew,
This audience of idleness
Disdained them from the sky,

Till sundown crept, a steady tide,
And men that made the hay,
And afternoon, and butterfly,
Extinguished in its sea.

After envisioning the sky as sea, the butterfly personified, let’s take a minute of silence to mourn 500,000 bats who have died from a fungus in their humble caves.

A MOTH by Henry Bellyse Baildon

A clumsy clot of shadow in the fold
Of the white blind,-a moth asleep or dead,
And hooked therein with still, tenacious hold,
And dusky vans outspread.

Laid on my hand a wonder of dull dyes,
A somber miracle of mingled grain,
Gray etched on gray, faint as faint memories,
Dim stain invading stain.

Each wind-edge scalloped clear as any shell’s,
With rippled repetitions ebbing in
Rhyme within rhyme, as when cathedral bells
Remit their joyous din.

Complete is it of broken laceries,
A pencilled maze of blending grays,
Mosaic of symmetric traceries,
Assorted in sweet ways.

Black velvet grainings upon pearly ash,
An elf-wrought broidery of hues they stole
From the black moss-blot, and the lichen splash,
From birch or beechen bole.

Strange-headed thing, in ruminative rest
Stirring its flexile antlers dreamily,
With great ghoul-eyes and sable-feathered breast,
In sleep’s security.

"There rest thee, and sleep off thy drowsy fit,
Till night shall triumph in the dusky glades,
And mass her conquering glooms, then rise and flit-
A shadow through the shades!"

If the mystery of a moth can inspire poetic mastery, what can the "ultimate mystery of oneself" inflame? If the Delphic oracle in ancient Greece could recognize that "the soul of a man is unknowable, is the ultimate achievement of wisdom," what can modern men expect to divine? Aristotle the Greek philosopher threw down the gauntlet with his four requirements for advanced education for the thoughtful man: temperance, courage, practical wisdom and justice. When will America pick it the enlightened glove?