Seeking Our Resolve

Seeking Our Resolve

"When in the course of human events", do we stray
Or remain in a direction that speaks to our resolve ?
Making a mark in life, our resolve. What is the way?
Ancestry commands all of its strengths must evolve :

Then, from the fringes into the middle, a line struck
Marking the optimum course to achieve desired goal.
Familiarity captains ship, reads charts, exudes luck,
All the while the groove is ground etching the soul :

And then, the die being cast, you put your shoulder
To the task ahead committing yourself into action,
Finally realizing an unexamined life is not one bolder,
But one swinging widely poised to gain more traction.

Life marked to succeed by person's true grit gathers
Many followers. Desire to win with a winner matters.

Ronald C. Downie
An English Sonnet

Frogs

Frogs

Plundering for energy
Greed extracts with lust
Earth's horrid demons,
Let loose...extinction ?

Faint from emissions,
Clear skies polluted
From gross bunker bile
Belched aloft as vapor :

Raising Planet's temperature,
Clouding Earth's atmosphere,
Melting every ancient ice cap,
Deserts form from fertile lands.

Forests wilt and whither
Back they must retreat
To once much colder zones,
If unable, be forever gone.

Rising waters lap over top
Engineered built higher dykes
To tame rising, angry seas
Enraged by awful, wrecking storms.

Dreamer's fond lost memories:
Azure colored embracing skies,
Soft green slopes covered of moss,
Rainbow colors pastel in flowers,
Winter's whiteness, Spring's rebirth,
Summer's warmth, Autumn's harvest.

But,"We Pledge Allegiance...",
Sing,"America The Beautiful",
Love high performance automobiles
Which speed beyond set limits.

Desire every darn device devised,
We worship the arrogance of excess:
With 4% of World's population
We consume 20% of World's energy.

Is our future very pretty ? Or,
Are we to be like lowly Frogs
Placed in pot of cold water
Brought up to a rolling boil ?

Will we stew slowly, swimming
Happily in the warming water
Until voiceless, then croak ?
What will be our cooking time ?

Just how long can we last ?
Frogs, Frogs, you and me, Frogs.
Jump! Jump! Get out of that pot !
Holler! Holler! Don't, no, do not croak!

Honor a basic, primary oath -
"First - Do No Harm -"
Be a doctor to the Earth
"Do No Harm !"

Ronald C. Downie

Connection

Connection

We were young bright faced back then
Yet lived through each hard war year.

Seated far too long we were fidgety
Shifting again and again in our chair,

Adolescently tuned in for ring, ring,
Recess, up and out, gulping in fresh air.


Loudly spilling out past heavy metal doors
We chose sides for macadam ball games,

High-low jumping preceded double Dutch .
Pupil pods were sprouting lifelong nicknames .

We chalked for hop Scotch, loved dodge ball,
Made fast friends long before our adult aims .


How high could a metal chain swing be pumped ?
How fast could the rickety old merry-go-round turn ?

How much climber time did we spend up side down ?
How was hard steel hand polished smooth as an urn ?

How far out were the fields where big kids played ?
How do we remember Miss Neiman who urged us all to learn ?


She joins with memories of cool chilling breezes sent yet
From western blue skies, mauve at late sunset, still .

She is present in our thoughts about classrooms, those of
The playground, even, out picking milkweed pods, at a fire drill .

Mrs. Francis Neiman Buchert, here today with us, is our
Connection to Lower Pottsgrove Elementary School, built upon a hill .

Ronald C . Downie

The Art Of Listening

The Art Of Listening

When we lean on the cluttered din of the day
Few sounds can escape chatter's deafening wake.
Sharp piercing sounds squeal loudly, far away,
The rest, cloud like, low muffled sounds make :

Then in conversation which guides this very day,
From clouds back to Earth, beckons our own reply.
Uptempo, finding why's and wherefores, we may
State truths and falsehoods out loud to the sky :

And then, do we really wait for an answer returned ?
Or, have we retreated back into the heavens cloudy,
Not hearing the din nor if the responder's concerned,
Which has bearing living silently, if not, then loudly?

Lost is the "Art Of Listening" basic to Earth as sod,
But, grown so closely, are we just "Pees In A Pod"?

Ronald C. Downie
A sonnet

Past Is Knowledge ; Future , Wisdom

Past Is Knowledge ; Future, Wisdom

Water, like thought, calms when slowed
Into deep pools at cool quiet depths
Where mud and murk bottom settles
To clear the liquid for it's final trip .

Thought, if not allowed to calm
And settle out busy nonessential
Clutter that keeps the mental stream
Clean, finds no clear ideas will surface .

As water makes it's long journey
To the sea, it encounters swiftly
Moving rapids and falls that roar
Before it again pools and calms .

So too, the mind's mental travel path
Must shoot the turbulences of doubt,
Navigate trouble, and evil, and fear,
Each cascading down until calm calms.

Ever since the early dawning of time
When water appeared on the earth,
It adapted to Earth's Natural Laws :
Repeat, repeat, over and over, repeat.

In his time, upright man found a force
Far beyond his physical prowess, when
The vast utter strength of his mental
Ability raised him above common beasts.

The sun, the moon, stars, earth, water,
The air, the eagle, fire, wind, and rain -
Man would experience and then worship.
But, as with water, strong storms disturb,

Alters flows, and interrupts water's calm;
Quite common with Nature's Earthly way.
But thinking man dreams about the future
Thus he soon becomes uncertainty's victim.

The past is knowledge, the future, wisdom.
And through time knowledge accumulates,
But wisdom is fickle, and the needed spark
Not timely, so wisdom has to be nurtured.

Water flows everywhere to the very
Same Laws Of Gravity, while thought,
Not contained within our physical world,
Flows in a stream we all seek to posses.

Ronald C . Downie

I Love The Art In Stone

I Love The Art In Stone

I love the art in stone shown much less, these days,
When hung framed on bare walls of homes, in ways,
Absent of a stone mason's style of art, he displays,
With hammer and chisel his love of stone, he plays .

Gathering in fresh farm springs
Country creeks flow downstream
Eroding outcroppings of hard rock
Strata used as wagon crossings
Later becoming bridge locations .

Near these, built at creekside,
Stone walls rise four stories tall,
Deep window sills mark each floor,
At the peak a hoist beam extends .

Below is an arched stone mill race,
Where channeled swift water turns
A huge drive wheel that transfers
Power by wide leather belts up to
The grinding floor where grain is
Fed between a flat stone face and
Another stone face that is turning .

Flour feeds an early struggling Nation .
Cut stone seeks a past's artful relation .

Mills, Roller Mills, Flour Feed Mills
Still stand tall, their art's in place,
Family named, silent, strong the walls.
Their need is gone, now long forgotten .

You. - cameras, You - pencils,
You. - water colors, You - oil pigments,
You. - Have you captured their souls ?

I love the art in stones when built as walls.

Ronald C . Downie

The Passion Of Ayn Rand

"The Passion of Ayn Rand"

Anyone interested in what America missed from this last election was summed up in a movie I just watched on television . "The Passion Of Ayn Rand" shockingly opened my eyes to the unbelievable life of one of the most influential women of the 20th Century. So open, I understand now, the lust of the Tea Party for the women known as Ayn Rand, who plied her influence, over the likes of, Paul Ryan, the Republican choice for Vice President in 2012.

Rand, the vixen of individuality, may have brought over from the Soviet Union an air of mental superiority, but according to this film, it was her insatiable lust for sex with a man twenty-five years younger that caused her downfall. Rand professed individualism but she needed a partner in bed or anywhere else and demanded sex very often to cool her physical desires.

This Queen, Ayn Rand, of the Tea Party establishment and of a Vice President want-to-be could have changed the World ; love over hate would become the banner and the war cry. Rutting would become so darn commonplace, it would be like in a barnyard during spring arousal. So many pregnancies would pop out, the Republican Party would have to adopt contraception and, heaven forbid, abortion. What a time we missed out on, if only Paul Ryan had prevailed ; revise that thought, better yet, thank God he lost, thank goodness he lost.

Ronald C. Downie