Science can explain the facts, but it cannot explain the mystery. Scientists will tell you that rainbows were explained to everyone’s satisfaction by Descarte and Newton, who determined the rainbow is formed by the reflection of light from the surface of a raindrop, the reflections separating the light into its separate wavelengths, thus creating the bands of color. Do not believe them.

Late morning, sun-laced misty rain, the river bank in bloom
With flaming dogwood mirrored on the quiet flowing stream
I chanced to look beyond the bend, and spied the faery loom
Transparent and as gauzy as a dream
Around the loom the faeries danced, I listened, but in vain
The tableau silent, faery wings, so blurred with motion bled
And as spellbound I watched the dance, I saw that they had lain
Upon the grass a brilliant bow of red
That slowly rose above the trees and formed a flaming arc
Then anchored by the flurried wings into its chosen place
A phantom bow of colored light, so red it turned the bark
Of dogwood into dancing flames of grace
Now from the loom came orange light, with orange shadows cast
By faery wings as light emerged in gleaming colored bows
As weavers crafted yellow, green, each larger than the last
And quicker paced came blues and indigos
All hastened to the growing bow, and set atop the first
By swarms of hurried faery wings intent on building well
While at the loom a violet, came tumbling with a burst
I held my breath, afraid to break the spell
Into the air the violet bow now gloriously crowned
The shining rainbow fashioned of the purest spectral light
And as I watched, the faery wings dropped slowly to the ground
And with their loom they faded from my sight
Again I saw the river bank, the dogwood, sun-splashed mist
The rainbow shining quietly above the river’s banks
A mystery that I believe shows God has truly kissed
Our world with wonder, all without much thanks

The great anomaly is that time is an illusion but the calendar doesn’t lie. And so, having attained a certain age, I occasionally wonder where I’ve been and where I’m going, and what, if anything, is the purpose. We are all of us bounded by the twin illusions of space and time, much as a property may be bounded by the woods. Which leads to the question, is the boundary woods real, or is it, too, an illusion? If space and time are illusions, and if the boundary of our lives is an illusion, what then are we experiencing? Is all an illusion, and if so, to what purpose?

We live our lives in certitude that all about is real
That memory recalls the past, and rain and cold we feel
That time flows past at leisured pace, the future yet to come
Time’s flowing stream depositing the past, that is for some
The distant future and for others pressing present times
But all is an illusion and what’s real is unmatched rhymes
Where man and sparrow think the world is what it is he sees
But what is seen is different for the mantis shrimp and bees
The bounding woods we enter at our birth and leave at death
Are ours to walk about alone until our final breath
And so alone we live surrounded by all that we love
Till in the woods we hear the singing of the mourning dove
And yet in the illusion we seem real to those we leave
And in the woods that binds them they stand quietly and grieve
While we unbounded by the woods discover that the whys
Of life is that free of the woods that nothing ever dies
For man and sparrow, mantis shrimp and bee alike shall live
Beyond the woods and know the joy that Providence will give
To all who enter into life and walk the wooded trails
To those who journey through the woods to lifting of the veils

The Left reacts violently to the words Clash of Civilizations, but of course it is, and the Left is complicit in the destruction of Western and Christian values and traditions. But values and traditions are hard to kill, as the would-be killers will inevitably discover, to their sorrow. Do Muslims kill Christians for no reason other than that they are Christians? Of course they do, but the Left has gone to great pains to see to it that we will not ever see it that way. But some of us do see it that way, and the tipping point will be reached and that will be the end of it. Islam is a killer religion, and throughout history Muslims have killed all they deem as The Other.

They push old wheelchaired men off boats
They smile for cameras cutting throats
They kill at weddings, brides and grooms
They drag young women from their rooms
And stone them, laughing as they kill
While shouting it is Allah’s will
They dress young kids in vests and bombs
And send the pictures to the moms
They cheer in streets as thousands die
As terror kills them from the sky
An embassy is no safe place
From this disgusting, vilesome race
They kill on Christmas holy days
And now it’s time to show the ways
The West has found to kill a man
As quick and dirty as we can
We’re slow to anger, but we will
And one day soon there’ll be a kill
A thousand suns will burn the grass
And all the sand will turn to glass
For only then will terror end
We never break, but sometimes bend
But bend enough and something gives
And now awake the Cruzer lives
To don his helm and sharpen sword
And send them all to hell’s reward

The Democrats believed that they could attain a permanent governing majority by being the black, Hispanic and women party, blissfully unaware that telling white people that they weren’t included anymore was a losing strategy. White people are still the majority ethnicity in the country, and when it became clear the Democrats were prepared to make white people second class citizens in their own country, white women, to the shocked surprise of the Democrats, voted white. As a result of this miscalculation the Democrats are now a failed political party, controlling virtually nothing but a couple of very blue states. Nationalism has been unleashed by the Democrats, and nationalism will keep them in the cold and the dark for a very long time, and if, in the wake of the Trump triumph they turn further left, to Sanders or Warren, they may very well disappear forever, and join the Whigs in the footnotes.

They played the race card but were Trumped
And lost to their surprise
They did not think they would be dumped
Could not believe their eyes
Election night the votes rolled in
With Florida the first
To show the totals that scrolled in
Proclaiming Trump’s big burst
That took the Dems’ last firewalls
And Pennsylvania too
The Trump borne winds now heavy squalls
As states turned red from blue
The country that’s between the coasts
Flyover, Dems still sneer
Despite the tone deaf leftist boasts
The country is now queer
Identity and gender make
Us what we are today
But white folks said you will not take
Our fathers’ land away
Now free men have their country back
The winds of change a gust
As red state folks force Dems to pack
And turn the Left to dust

My grandkids, in the wisdom of youth, oft times say to me that I should get out more. Little do they know that I have spent a very large part of my life among the stars.

In fancied flight I take to wing and dance among the stars
And hail a passing comet destination yet unknown
We fling ourselves into the gap twixt Jupiter and Mars
And into deepest silence yet unflown
Surrounded by a stygian dark that pressed on every side
We flew until the firmament exploded into light
Revealing gods and goddesses so beautiful I cried
To think that I should witness such a sight
Through galaxies that spun before a solemn golden calf
Through ancient cities turned to dust but gloried in their times
With figures scrawled upon the walls their only epitaph
And in the wind the sound of distant chimes
Into the void until we reached the edge of all we know
The boundary that held us all inside its fenced array
A sign upon the fence warned this was far as we could go
Beyond lay knowledge that could lead astray
The mightiest of nations and the humblest of kings
That some had dared the fence and left in shambles his estate
And that it was too dangerous for man to know all things
That knowing all would come but now must wait
I disregarded warnings and proceeded through the fence
Into the void we sped intent on our forbidden search
The darkness and the cold at once oppressive and intense
To find a snow white dove upon a perch
High in a pine so tall it seemed to reach beyond the sky
Of diamond studded velvet that bathed all in glowing mist
And looking at the dove I whispered softly, Tell me why
And in response he said, If you insist
And told to me the answer to the meaning of it all
That comforted where once I was afraid
Alas he smiled and said what’s told you never will recall
Until the day the final dance is played

A few weeks ago, before Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45^th president of the United States, the political leadership of the Cathedral of Information and Assassination, the CIA, made public an entirely false hit piece that portrayed then president-elect Trump as a sex maniac and stooge of the Russians, subject to blackmail. The attempted political assassination failed in its attempt to destroy the president-elect when the complete falsity of the document became instantly apparent. A cathedral still, but the glass is stained. However, the attempted political assassination served its purpose, which was to serve notice that it is the CIA that rules, not the president. What President Trump will do about this attempted political assassination, now that he has the power, will surely be swift and certain.

The Cathedral sits on hallowed ground
In Langley close to Heaven
And from the choir comes the sound
Of Matins at eleven
Intelligence or so the claims
The truth is what they pray
As sunlight through the stained glass frames
The goddess Leucothae
But politics has entered church
Directors bend to winds
As high above the pigeons perch
As punishment for sins

Today is the inauguration of the 45^th president of the United States, Donald J. Trump. The new president will attempt to undo the damage done by the previous president, who has shown, by his every action, that he believed implicitly that the United States was evil, and needed to be weakened in order to protect the rest of the world from us. In the early 70s, T-rex released a hit song called Ride A White Swan. We all know that during President Trump’s eight years in office he will be faced with a black swan or two, but we rather imagine he will handle them with intelligence, competence and dispatch.

The swan glides smoothly and with grace
Upon the mirrored lake
And carries he from place to place
Whomever fate will take
And thrust him fierce into the fray
The placid waters foamed
Upon which coal black swans will play
Their feathers sleek and combed
The placid lake turns flaming red
As crisis fills the air
And ghostly figures of the dead
Cry out in black despair
It’s then that leaders earn their name
For every moment counts
The outcome will be flame or fame
So from his swan dismounts
To slay the coal black feathered beast
His shield and armor don
And with the beast now dead, deceased
Returns to his white swan
The country saved, the people weep
For joy, for they know when
Out on the lake the swans all sleep
The country’s great again

When I was seven I chanced upon a blacksnake and a toad. Jaws agape, the large blacksnake slowly worked his way up behind the still and unblinking toad. The toad, as hypnotized as I, never moved, even as it slowly disappeared into the snake, never made the slightest effort to get away. Many years later I again experienced the blacksnake and the toad episode, in the form of the American Left and the unblinking, unresisting population that allowed itself to be ingested into the snake.

Henry Wallace, former Secretary of Agriculture and a not so secret Stalinist in FDR’s employ, ran for president in 1948, his campaign managed Senator George McGovern, who twenty years later would capture the Democratic Party during the turmoil of the Vietnam War and turn the Party violently to the Left. McGovern lost to Nixon, who won 49 states, but Watergate propelled a new class of rabidly left Democrats into the House of Representatives, and the radical left has retained control of the Democratic Party ever since, with predictable results. The Progressive blacksnake has swallowed the toad, and even if we kill the snake, as I did when I was seven, when I came out of my snake-hypnotized state and grabbed him by the tail and smashed him with all my seven year old might against a telephone pole, the toad was still dead.

The serpent in our midst is oft a mirror of ourselves
A neighbor or a colleague, or a friend of many years
But history is useless if just books upon the shelves
As serpents play upon our many fears
The leftist is beguiling with his gleaming scaly skin
His red forked tongue quick darting from his smiling arrowed head
He says he has the answers to the troubles that we’re in
And smiles in knowing all the lies we’re fed
The snake is often charming, often handsome, even fun
His stock in trade convincing you your life is a mistake
That only he can make the oceans rise and rivers run
But lift the curtain and he’s still a snake

There are billions upon billions of giant balls of fire flying through space at fantastic speeds, giant balls of fire that burn for billions and billions of years, so far away they appear to us as distant points of light. Many of these giant balls of fire have smaller bodies circling around them in the mad dash through nearly empty space, and of these smaller rocky bodies many shelter living creatures. And this empty space through which these balls of fire and accompanying planets and satellites are traveling is neither empty nor space, for space does not in fact exist, and neither does time, not in the blinkered, fog-draped sense of our complete misunderstanding. And yet, despite all this, there are still those who do not believe in miracles.

The light of day dims slowly as the slyly stealing dusk
Greets night with loving arms and loving eyes
That hides the guttering fire of the distant near-dead husk
That once held captives spinning in the skies
But now the once bright fire is a giant ball of red
That swallowed all its captives long ago
Its planets and the life they held are gone and all are dead
With nothing left of them to ever show
That life and art and love and music once had graced them all
And creatures who believed that they had made
The world and all within it until chance had made the call
And slowly did their star begin to fade
But was it chance that made the call or was it something old
Far older than they knew that stilled the fire
And though ‘twas running out of time ‘was far from growing cold
And soon would come disaster far more dire
The blast would sunder all around to elemental size
And light the sky a thousand years and more
So bright far distant creatures saw the light and hid their eyes
And knew that fate had that for them in store
And yet did chance or accident have anything to do
With births and deaths of fires freely burned
Or did the fires’ deaths provide star stuff for fires new
And miracles there be for those who’ve yearned
For answers to eternal questions that are ever raised
And looking inward find they do not know
But looking at those points of light upon which eyes have gazed
The answer’s in that tiny, distant glow

If the hive is the cult, whether of personality or idea, the hive will always be with us, for it is the nature of man to dominate his fellow man, to make him conform to the wishes of the dominator. And when threatened, the hive will defend itself with unbounded fury. We see this in the ferocious attack by the Democrat hive on the legitimacy of the Trump election, calling for spurious recounts and blaming their defeat on the evil machinations of the Russians, all in the attempt to damage the incoming president and make it impossible for him to govern. Such is the nature of the Left, and such is the nature of the Leftist hive that believes they and only they have the right to rule. The Democrat hive is going crazy, the first sign of collapse. Radical Leftist Progressivism is dead, and along with it the cult of feminism and political correctness. How long before the collapse is final we do not know, but it cannot be long in coming.

The hive lies hidden, guarded by the servants of the poor
Who dress in lucent garb of glowing light
Defining definitions of the meaning of the store
Of knowledge they’ve acquired overnight
The hive contains all wisdom that the universe has set
In motion to perplex the simple mind
And issues memoranda stating what we must forget
And what we are to seek and what to find
The swarm emerges at a signal from the golden throne
Attacking enemies with savage lust
Not knowing that the Queen is but an ugly, shriveled crone
And soon the hive collapses into dust
And yet another hive arises just beyond the hill
Unhidden and unbidden yet it stands
The hive is always with us, always was and always will
And eager to enwrap us in iron bands