Thursday, January 21, 2021

BREATHLESS

 by George Salamon




"Joe Biden must usher in a new era," —The Hill, January 20, 2021

"Not the least of the torments which plague our existence is the constant pressure of time, which never lets us so much as draw breath but pursues us all like a taskmaster with a whip." —Arthur Schopenhauer, On the Suffering of the World.


We can stop and draw our breath,
like we did as children, playing,
the flotsam of years is not gone,
the losses of just one year took
on such proportions that the days
grew dark, the stories in the papers
were too much to bear, we grew
hardened, now we can return to
the world of the visible, the world
of the reliable, return to hear the
rustle of the human and the animal,
see the reliable green of forests and
wilderness, touch the solid walls of
houses that did not crumble and be
touched by pictures of painters that
are art until we are ready for the  
journey inward to recover the light 
of logic we lost in a long and dark tunnel.


George Salamon not sure we are on the threshold of a "new era" yet, or are ready for it, but he hopes we will get there. In the meantime, he expects he'll keep contributing to The Asses of Parnassus, One Sentence Poems, Dissident Voice and The New Verse News from St.Louis.