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@Lynn Geri

Thank you Lynn for the vulnerability to envision the loss and make that possible future pain present to motivate us to actions that will help avoid it.

That’s the power of poetry. It is not a prediction but a clear and intense imaginary dip into what it would feel like to live in that possible outcome of current trends.

Feel it! Not just a political defeat but a drear domination into a vise grip of sameness and subjugation. The end of free agency as you are regimented into handmaidens and children’s creativity is slammed into the straight jacket of dogma while we are marched like lemmings toward the cliffs of global warming extinction. Let it sink in.

Then, meet each day with the resolve to erase that possibility.

Here's a poem of mine that is a call to wake up and take action...

We Are Odysseus

By Larry LaVerdure

A veil of the familiar trivializes our lives

making us small and ordinary.

There’s escape in that for some

but not for us, involuntary visionaries.

We fear that we have been born to greatness

or that great service may be thrust upon us.

But then there’s that vague veil mess

of averting our eyes, failing to trust

the urgings our own beating hearts.

The veil of the ordinary hides our purpose

like fog that hides a distant, deadly shore.

Though we feel ordinary, there’s so much more

than our petty quips and rancid wanderlust.

We have heroes work to do,

we who hear the cracking whip and

feel the wrenching thumbscrew of history.

There is vindication on our lips

and our purpose is born of misery.

We who have felt the blame heaped on the bereft,

who know the mean streets of violence

the abuse of the racial, overwrought arrest

and felt the shame of hapless witness in silence.

We have seen those who would welcome

the luxury to turn away to a day of privilege

to a sense of safety even if t ’were

a day of errands, a grocery shopping dredge

with enough wherewithal

to pay for it all.

We who drown in inaction.

We who escape to fantasy,

Fill our ears with fantasy-notions.

We tied to the mast of our aversions

Unlike Odysseus long ago on a

Wine dark sea bound to adventure

Seeking a way back home,

A way back to community.

A way back to family.

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Oh, Larry, that was a wonderful read. Loved, "we who hear the cracking whip and/

feel the wrenching thumbscrew of history." and the "seeking a way back home. " message. You are right about poetry. I would like us to stop describing the source of our pain. CFDT is going to do his thing. I want to start thinking about what will be lost that we need to build a life around... actually grieve what we are already loosing.

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