Happy Fourth of July: Be grateful, be proud, be united.

People have died for an idea, a lot of people, they fought and gave up their lives because they wanted something better for their families. They faced hardships, starved and met great obstacles to start something new and daring. A place where you had freedom to choose your own destination, religion, opportunity: America was born.

Over time, our perspective changed, what was right and wrong challenged and again people died for freedoms that we all share. They died to keep a country united, they died because they believed in something.

The following years there were people who rode the bus against the rules, dared to speak when they weren’t welcome to, dared to imagine being equal, being free. They fought, they died for an idea, so their families could know freedom and justice.

In our current complacent state, there still are wrongs, there still are injustices but we have come too great a distance to see our country being divided by the same government that is supposed to unite it. We have a media that speaks the same language the government speaks and insists the victims are victims and insist they deserve something, even at the risk of crippling them.

We have candidates insisting they will make everything better, again, little hope that we, America, could stand and be America again. I don’t see us as a country full of victims but if you listen to the news you would think that’s what makes America.

Police are criminals and criminals are saints, sounds like an old familiar song. The same freedom soldiers died for allows us to step and degrade the very flag that allows us the freedoms we don’t, by right, deserve. We are lucky to live in this country, we are lucky to be able to complain about how hard we have it, I would suggest instead thank a soldier and thank God we live in America.

Let us Make America the best it’s ever been!! Together, not divided, one nation of people, not colors, not creeds-we Americans. Happy fourth of July.

Eclipse

You are light

But I stand in shadow

I look at my heart

My passions

Hollow

You’re the aggressive vine

Grasping all my support

And precious time

I can barely fathom myself

And yet I wouldn’t trade you

For anything, anyone else

You are my greatest work

In God’s design

All your colors, all your beauty his

All your damage, mine

I can barely orchestrate your path

You break out of barriers of expectation

You’ve grown too fast

For me to keep contained

The distance grows, duty remains

As my clarity dissolves

All words seem insignificant

And all your riddles unsolved

You will become

As you become

And you will do wonderful things

Despite all control I keep

I was the light, the sun

But you, my son, have eclipsed me

An Absence in the Garden

The garden stands as it promised

From passionate seeds, color in a colorless world

And I am color blind

Walk along the edge of order

And chaos

Feel as the fragrant jasmine insists

It exists

See the richness of flames of tithonia

And coneflower

They wait until I wake

Wait until I’m present

Out of this state

But the green seems pointless

And the shadows seem only dark

Waited for the threatening limbs of a dying tree

They’ve come down

They’ve given in to the heat, to the light

And I am standing in the stagnant air

Cicadas callously sigh

The heavy weight, I can barely breath

Worms are working tirelessly in the ground

The hole seems silent

But it always gapes

And I can feel every wound

The lack of feeling is the scar

Walk among the shriveled weeds

Hope I haven’t gone too far

As the structure grows above the gardener

And the gardener sleeps in a  mushroom ground

The birds with songs they can’t remember

Fade with little sound

It’s summer, the grey earth, the parched seed

And I am just an absence in a  garden

Another petulant weed.

http://artbygordon.com/?page_id=475

Check out the new images of the 2016 wildlife garden

When the sunflower last bloomed

I remember the light, I remember the yellows and golds

Hope

I remember pedals , their perfectly sculpted forms

Before the summer storms

Last  before the greys

Before my damaged eyes could only see this way

I remember the flowers from a child’s smile

How tall they grew how fast, how far

A forest of yellow

That dwarfed a child’s innocent mind

They fell, they always fall as summer insists it perilous

Flame

The pause in the fall before winter came

But now, everything feels the same

All pastel replaced by grey

Sad the artist whose eyes stay closed

Who sees a sunflower that way…

Freefall

Falling, without the wisdom to catch one’s self

Nor the realization or intent

Pray the ground is patient

I felt the breeze, desperate to taste any hint of season,

I saw the colors change in rapid succession

From blues to reds and back

I was hungry, starving

And yet I couldn’t fathom nourishment

As the self collided with remnants

Me in freefall

You cross the edge of a great chasm of empty

You ache to know what makes you happy

And the indifference of the space beneath you

Insists you it’s going to be a long ride down

I wish I could explain to someone the lack of direction

Even while my direction

The past decides

And any future, or glimmer of hope

The remnants over ride

I’m not complaining

They cost me everything

And that’s a small part of the unfamiliar face

that paces in the yard

And seeks some form of comfort

A place

To escape

And when you find that self it is a stranger

That barely realizes its own desire

I feel the shadows lengthening

Must be evening

As all of my senses abide

To the absence of control

And the submission of time

Falling, I don't want to get back in the plane

I don’t want to question or complain

I am confident in the space beneath that quickly becomes the past

How slow the days, the hours

How horribly fast

Redefinining wisdom like a dull weapon

Honed on a finishing stone

We go recklesslessly, horribly alone

And all the spaces around me seem empty

And all intent vacant

Down from a sky of indifference

I hope the ground is patient