Some time ago I stood on a dock, looking across the bay as a slowly setting sun turned the sky a brilliant rose and gold. A frail, elderly man appeared, so silently I hadn’t heard him come up.

He said the sunsets seem to come so fast
And morning sun just never seems to last
The memories are of the distant past
A movie with a once remembered cast
He smiled and said you find that you’re now slow
The aches you never had begin to show
The high is now less often than the low
And some of what you knew no longer know
He looked across the bay and seemed to tense
Then said for me time’s passage fair relents
And sunsets are for me mere incidents
I tell the man with scythe to take thee hence
He smiled and said I’m here a few more years
Though even now there’s much sand in the gears
For now though I choose laughter over tears
And face the coming sunset with no fears
I watched him walk away, so bent and slow
As all around the shadows seemed to grow
A youngster gently took his hand in tow
Lit by the fading sunset’s afterglow

A Conservative party in Germany, the AfD, the Alternative fur Deutschland, whose platform was anti-Muslim immigration, shocked the German Left by winning enough seats in the Bundestag to force Chancellor Merkel to try to form a coalition government, despite the German Left casting the AfD as Nazis. How convenient for the new Nazis, the European left, to brand those they oppose as Nazis. The American Left has been very successful in branding the Conservative Right as Nazis, and we see it now in Germany, where they had real Nazis with Tiger tanks. To Leftists everywhere, to be opposed to unlimited immigration for people who want to kill you and opposed to open borders that will quickly lead to the destruction of your country and the burying of its traditions and culture, is to be a Nazi. I suggest the German Left stop to consider what it might be like if they and their Muslim friends actually see a real Nazi.

There’ve been no Nazis for a while
When was the last time you heard “Heil!”
Do you see Brownshirts in the streets
Emoji swastikas in tweets
Skies black with Bf 109s
Or infantry in long grey lines
For if you do you’d better run
You will be dead by morning sun

The United States has always been a fractious people, with deeply held differences, but always united in one thing; their love of country, exemplified in the past by the instant response to the flag and the national anthem. On national holidays flags adorned every house and every building. When the high school band marched onto the field and struck up the opening bars of The Star Spangled Banner everyone in the stands stood up and placed a hand over his heart, and thrilled to the meaning of the words and music, thrilled to see the flag gently rippling at the bidding of sweet freedom’s breeze. No more. The Left has ripped us apart, stripped us of the one thing that united us all, Democrat and Republican, believer and atheist, black and white, male and female, rich and poor, the shared unity of belonging to the same magnificent and beautiful country. The Democratic Party has embarked on the dangerous policy of dividing the country in order to gain electoral victories through identity politics, and has succeeded only in dividing us. We are divided as never before, and are, perhaps, mortally wounded. When NFL football players piss on the flag they piss on the country, and we are forced to choose sides. I know whose side I am on.

The beauty of the spacious skies and amber waves of grain
Are spit upon by those who think that they have much to gain
By tearing up the compact that the rest of us believe
And spitting on the folks who wear their hearts upon their sleeve
Who stand up for the anthem and salute the nation’s flag
While Lefty slugs insist that it is just a dirty rag
The players who piss on the flag and sit or take a knee
Complete the Leftist goal of half the country slave, half free

Children can see things and know things that others can no longer see and no longer know. Are there angels? Are there faeries? Certainly there are. Do children see and speak to those no longer here? Of course they do. For children, truth, beauty and mystery are part of their brightly lit world.

Time and Space are illusions
What was, is, and what is, was
There is an entire shimmering universe
Just beyond our peripheral vision
And sometimes a fleeting glimpse
Is vouchsafed to the very young
And spotlessly innocent

Not so long ago it was settled science that insanity was caused by moonbeams, hence the word lunatic, and I’m not so sure they weren’t right. History abounds with examples of entire countries apparently going insane, and I believe the United States is doing so right now. The insanity has been building for some time, with political correctness and other insanities. I spoke to a lefty lunatic recently and she said,

Abolishing biology
Has freed up our psychology
To live without apology
As gendered as we wish
Tossed in the trash is his and her
All pronouns smashed as they occur
No more madame, and no more sir
Revenge is a sweet dish
And soon all white males will be gone
Thus bringing forth a bright new dawn
No longer we are white males’ pawn
And we are free at last
No longer bathrooms segregate
No longer need we propagate
Into the closets for the straight
And it is coming fast
I thought it better not to speak
She could not take the least critique
Her kind would win within the week
Insanity now loomed
She walked away, her head held high
I watched her with a soulful sigh
The moon has risen in the sky
And sanity is doomed

During a Greek Week fraternity retreat prior to start of classes this past semester at the University of Mississippi, a student at the retreat ate a banana, and finding no trash receptacle close by, put the banana peel in a tree rather than throw it on the ground. Three black students came upon the banana peel in the tree and immediately cried Racism! The University investigated, canceled the fraternity retreat, and even though the culprit came forth and admitted placing the banana peel in the tree and the reason for his doing so, the lack of a trash receptacle, it did not matter. Racism is racism, intended or not.

To some it’s just banana peel
To others it is how they feel
When seeing one just hanging in a tree
Reminds them of the bad old days
When lynch mobs laughed to see the sways
Of Negro bodies that yearned to be free
They say the sight of yellow peels
In trees are triggers that reveals
The racism that’s in each white man’s heart
It matters not the clear intent
There’s no such thing as innocent
By such small signs is how the lynchings start
So there you have it, in the main
What whitey does will always pain
And if you’re white they won’t give you a pass
They always see a racist plot
In words or peels, intent or not
You’re enemy to the large victim class

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 refraction of light from the surface of a raindrop, the refraction 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 demolition of American history, so far advanced in academia, has spilled into the streets, with the tearing down of statues of Confederate generals, the leftists charging that slave owners must not be honored, or even remembered. Authorities stand by and allow mobs to deface government property, elected Democrat mayors and governors encourage the destruction of American history, and it will end, as is planned, with the destruction of the Jefferson Memorial and the Washington Monument because both men owned slaves, and then on to the tearing up of the Declaration of Independence because a substantial majority of its signers owned Negro slaves. And after that the United States Constitution will be declared illegitimate for the same reason. The statues are only the beginning.

I cry for my beloved land
My grandchildren will never know
The beauty of the land that looked
So wonderful when deep in snow
Or Spring when rows of green appear
In fields as traffic flashes by
And Summer by the sea or lake
When thunderheads reach to the sky
They will not see what we have seen
They will not know what we have known
A land where we could speak our mind
Be unafraid that leftist creeds
Would triumph over sense and law
And history thrown in the weeds
The shame is ours for standing by
As leftist thugs tore up the streets
And ambushed cops and shot them down
Then celebrate with rage filled tweets
We watched in silence as the Left
The spawn of Stalin took the stage
And swept the verities aside
Destroying all with insane rage
The toppled statues are the first
Of monuments to go in flames
The Constitution and the flag
Consumed in leftist hunger games
It’s gone, I fear, not to return
For generations, many years
For communism slowly dies
And until then we have but tears

Are we living in an inflationary universe? Is the universe we see infinite or finite? We don’t know, and possibly will never know, because the answers are unknowable. That the universe is infinite seems reasonable to believe, but an inflationary universe is far more mysterious and exciting than the infinite sameness and seamlessness of a static universe. An inflationary universe is one in which our segment of the universe ceased to inflate shortly after the Big Bang, but the inflation continued all around us, creating universes of undreampt wonders to this day, and will continue to do so for eternity.

Borne before the winds of time
Radiation coalesced
Into matter as it cooled
And then came to rest
Stars and galaxies were formed
Flooding light upon the dark
And in time lifeforms arose
Fired by a spark
Static is not nature’s way
And inflation flowed apace
All around, creating new
Universes filling space
Every one of different hue
Complex chemicals arrayed
In arrangements never seen
Star sung music played
Life believing it is they
Who create that which is known
They who master distant worlds
They the seedling stars have sown
What a wonder to behold
And to think how very odd
Some would say in earnest tones
That there is no God

On a long ago summer day, sitting in the sun, a ladybug chanced to light upon my knee. She rested there, apparently content, and as I watched the sunlight play on her spotted wing covers, I wondered what she was thinking, what her plans were for the rest of the day.

So still she sits upon my knee
Intent on her affairs
No sign there was that I could see
Of stress or other cares
But I was sure she came to me
For help in some regard
I thought perhaps the maple tree
At bottom of the yard
Held danger for her in some way
Some monster lurking there
To set upon her at her play
But then thought, who would dare?
For lady is a fearsome threat
To aphids and to mites
And if I had to make the bet
I’d say she’d win most fights
And as I deeply thought these things
So quietly she stirred
And flipped the covers on her wings
So rapidly they blurred
And with a tiny buzzing sound
She took then to the air
Content, I’m sure, that she had found
A friend who would be there
To see her through the parlous day
Her species often see
And offer, when she comes my way
To rest upon my knee