NIGHT TEARS….


Memories, reflections, joy, then deepest despair all cascading through me,
As though a river bursting free after a winter thaw in fury surging,
Aching now my heart is filled to ripping and I weep unabashedly with
emotions unchecked, broken free from the walls of reserve and stoicism;

Wearing my heart on my sleeve I stand wounded in the gunfire of experience,
A trooper in the war called life for which I never did enlist, merely drafted,
But running from battle to battle, from cause to cause, from love affair
To love affair, from tragedy to tragedy, and never tasting the wine of victory;

They stole my childhood and when I rebelled locked me away branded as insane,
From those days I walked Selma’s roads, Harlan Counties muddy trails, then
Wintered in an army prison for asking the reasons why, and they starved me,
But I won that struggle at another price so high I often asked myself why?

Now I sit playing the tunes from those long and hungry decades, tears stream,
Heart aches for what was given, what was lost, how little was won, gathered
In these years of my graying, as pain wracks me in these lonely weary hours,
And I look to my shotgun and think about the peace that lies therein, eternal….