Stars & Stripes

Stars & Stripes

First star showing I'm alive
Was posted in year, 1935.

Tartan threads grow the field
Accepting stars of yearly yield.

Stripes are custom, long and lean,
Marking vision's a yearly scheme.

But my banner's incomplete,
I write to people, I'll never meet ;

Do I really write for all of them :
The strong women, thoughtful men ?

But for myself, a rhyme is sought,
No meter's found to further my plot,

It is only by chance or is it a struggle
That word by word grows my puzzle.

Somewhere there's another Plowman's Bard
Walking the furrow's straight, deep, and hard.

He tramps God's Earth in want of nourishment ;
His mind's at work for destiny's encouragement.

One is so boldly driven for its benefactors ;
Other, dreams of clouds, as if they're actors.

Lasting the longest, beyond a generation,
Some build a society, some feed a nation.

Who said, "Man can't live by bread alone."
We think of dreamers where ever they roam.

Poets subsist on a sparse spartan menu ;
They write words for all the World to view.

So soon, "I'll lay me down for a long night's sleep".
Not knowing, if any words my readers will keep.

But that can't drive my lust to keep on writing ;
I write for me, then for thee, then the unborn waiting.

Forgive me for being so overtly aggressive,
For In my cluttered dreaming mind, the mess is.

To start a poem is not all that very hard,
It's been done fairly well by many a bard.

It's ending a poem that's a poet's blank wall,
The reader seeks closure, we hear its clear call.

Ronald C. Downie












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