Haiku From St. Louis During Difficult Times

“Awakened souls strengthen and encourage each other by their friendships and interchange of thoughts and revealments. They create a network of light over the planet and spin threads of mutual upliftment and inspiration.”
~Vida Reed Stone

This may be seen as a departure from my message for parents of addicts, especially since I am returning from quite a long absence, but events in St. Louis are calling me to reach out in a different way. There is a common thread in the following haiku however, which is in difficult times we must not run and hide, but live and confront our fears in healthy and productive ways as we continue on our journeys unimpeded by what life may may reveal to us. Distrust and prejudices nurtured over two centuries will not be eliminated easily through press conferences, commissions, rioting or police action. Only by accepting that we are in this together on this journey as a nation and not separate from them can we change.  And it's going to take a while for that lasting solution.

I am not minimizing the importance of this crossroads we have approached in St. Louis by expressing the issue in an ancient poetic form. I am merely expressing a complex debate in poetry I love to share and incorporating what I have learned along my journey to hopefully contribute a bit of calm and gentleness to a rising national rancor.

Enjoy, as we continue to use what we have learned on our journeys ...

Deadly force repulsed

Two souls in the same struggle

No easy answers

Mt. Vesuvius

When you forever repress

It's gotta release

Nature in turmoil

Cincinnati forgotten?

Now what can we learn?

Address root causes?

Easier to turn away

Than to look within

Time to affect change

Growing what has been denied

Possibilities

What's really needed

Justice or Equality

Buds of same flower

Burn Little Caesars?

Counterproductive actions

Dumb is what dumb sows

What causes the fear?

That "they" may be just like us

Harvests of hatred

… keep coming back