Carl Sanburg – radical druid

Good Morning: gloss (glosa)

Published on June 2, 2025

In these times you have to be an optimist to open your eyes when you awake in the morning – Carl Sandburg

You say you’re woke because your eyes
are open and you’re out of bed,
and yet describing what you see, you fail
to see yourself and choose instead
to catalog the failings of the world
that won’t conform to how you feel
and what you really want to see,
since reality has no appeal.

Your eyes are open, but you’re blind;
the world is what it’s always been.
It spins around each morning
and repeats itself, again.

You wonder why so few around
seem to believe your point of view,
without the benefit of your insight
or the mirror looking back at you.

You say, “Wake up!” to those who sleep,
“and smell the coffee’s sweet perfume,”
but disregard the fact that some
see more than just your tiny room
where stranger creatures come and go
to satisfy your cravings,
and make the world a better place
and something good worth saving.

02 JUN 2025

Small Things

Published on August 14, 2003

There is no better thing,
I guess, than to believe
that my good thoughts take wing
without a by-your-leave
and find their way to where
they are needed the most;
that way, I do not care
if they remember their host.

II:

There under the carport
in the sweltering heat
of summer, it made sport
among the sticky sweet
passion flower petals,
its dusky wings beating
against the fence metal
in a brief and fleeting
hope for immortality.
Top that reality.

III:

The box is there, outside —
if you look, the edges
may be visibly spied
and looked past, like hedges.
Don’t try to muscle past
taking them for granted;
for they will hold you fast
’til the day you’re planted.

IV:

I walked outside last night
while moon glow splashed the street
and the reflected bright
warmed my still earthbound feet.

Some faith is a madness
not often criticized;
Without questioning doubt,
it is too polarized.

14 AUG 2003

Choices

Published on March 19, 2003

Neither my acts or words will stop this war;
when you believe diplomacy has failed
and only destructive force is a sure
way, the coffin has already been nailed.

Besides, if you define terrorism
as the use of force, fear and coercion
to get your voice past the endless schism
where no one will listen to your version

then who is the terrorist, anyway?
America is showing it will not
talk or listen, so what choice has the world?

Without an ear, there is nothing to say.
I still will think it is an evil plot
and keep my hand stretched out, fingers uncurled.

19 MAR 2003

THE SINGLE clenched fist lifted and ready,
Or the open asking hand held out and waiting.
Choose:
For we meet by one or the other.
— Carl Sandburg, Choose, 1916

Tag: Carl Sanburg

Good Morning: gloss (glosa)

Small Things

Choices