CARRIER PIGEON 

REST STOP







*

EXCELSIOR

                    Discerning what is valuable and then
                    Creating it is our distinctive goal
                    As human beings, and well within our ken;
                    Too often, though, it’s the contrary pole
                    Of menace and destruction that prevails
                    In our behaviors, to our species’ shame,
                    Because of which our grand potential fails
                    To manifest and reach its destined aim.
                    What would it take to make it to such heights?
                    What wise amendment of our errant ways,
                    What guidance by truly illumined lights
                    Exalting us by their supernal blaze?
                         To find our way to that illustrious place
                         Is the implicit mission of our race.

*

[verse # 1934]

PRAIRIE HOME

                    The Prairie Home Companion Saturdays
                     On National Public Radio, presents
                     A feast of entertainment that always
                     Carries your imagination hence—
                     Where woes are gone and skits and songs divert
                     You from dismay, warming your heart and soul,
                     Putting your fantasy on high alert,
                     Restoring your fragmented mind to whole.
                     The mastermind accomplishing this cure,
                     One Gary Keillor, now called Garrison,
                     Without whose personality the show’s allure
                     Would disappear, lacking his sense of fun,
                          Should be commended by our government
                          For all the suffering his shows prevent.

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HOW TO THRIVE

                                  To be alive and then survive
                                  Will not arrive, lest we contrive
                                  By intellectual drive to thrive.

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ONTOLOGY

for Keith Ward

                 By wonder stunned the universe exists,
                 I fancy that it emanates from mind,
                 A notion loathsome to materialists
                 Denying that the cosmos was divined,

                 But rather thinking it an accident
                 That happened into being by mere chance
                 And not an artifact that’s heaven sent,
                 And lacking inclination to advance.

                 But if that’s so, then how did we appear
                 Embodying the qualities of mind
                 Without a precedent for our career,
                 And clearly for creative thought designed?

                     Where could mind come from if not from a mind?
                     The universe and we are of one kind.

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AFFLATUS

                         Of wonderings and profundities I sing
                         On my best days, to make the welkin ring,
                         Though they be far between; on other days
                         Like this, my errant Muse, lackluster, strays
                         And, at the best, a ditty may perform,
                         An exercise, till bright ideas swarm.

                         Another day, I hope, a verse with verve
                         That higher estimation may deserve
                         Will animate my less lackluster brain,
                         Showing no evidence of mental strain
                         But rather the spontaneous overflow
                         Arising from noetic depths below
                         Of notions preternaturally inspired
                         Soaring above where I now lie enmired.

*

FIAT LUX III

               Marvel and amazement are the right
               Responses we should feel about all life,
               Appropriately expressing our delight
               That organisms of all sorts are rife
               On Earth and have evolved to human kind,
               Who have developed the capacity
               Of higher consciousness that we call mind,
               The element of all reality.
               Where we evolve from here, we may suppose
               And even make it our intended goal:
               A conscious evolution that then grows
               Toward what will make our broken species whole
                    For somehow we have wandered into error,
                    Who ought to be the Earth’s supreme light bearer.

*