Each generation’s majority makes choices that usher change
Lost pined for simple peace
Depression lived for human survival
Silence spoke for equality in a civil voice
Hippies fought war with flowers
Boomers drove for mad knowledge of self
Grunge nodded honesty from suburban garages
Y baptized Science as god
Mobs then anointed Orange Man as king
Down at the crossroads as means to their ends
For taxes, for borders, for babies, for guns, for Right
Trading truth, communal values and united dreams for their causes
How will we be remembered
As we watch this Heyday bloom
What will be this generation’s rallying cry
Will there be one
A culmination of past generation's trusted change
Lost, depressed, silent, free, self-aware, honest, doubting
Us
Here now
Strong
Watching the flames
Will we quietly turn away
As our world burns
Or will we tap a new strength
To face the fire
Together


© 2019 MJL

The first flurries’ magic has dissolved
As flakes fly yet again
Filling the view through the back windows

We long for the final triumph of spring
When muds and buds have broken through
And have been warmed by the sun

The ice crystals mount their final assault
To see if they can defeat
The coming onslaught of green

November 22nd, 1963...
Junior year
Sitting in a noisy high school cafeteria.
JFK shot in Dallas.
Silence.
A sick joke, right?
Wrong! Gone! Never to return...
Tears.
Anguish.
This I remember.
Two Kings lost in Memphis...
A dream dissolves in a pool of blood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel,
An accidental overdose at Graceland.
Those moments, I too remember.
But others are missing.
Extraordinary moments, important only to me.
AWOL from memory.
LAST times.
If only I'd known...
The last time I danced on Daddy's feet,
The last time I heard my mother's voice calling me home to supper,
The last time I kissed the boy who would haunt my dreams for life.
Moments.
Fleeting... priceless... gone...
Never to be recalled.