Visas for Allies

Two syllables on the radio
Honor
The word heard
In two contexts
Theirs and ours.

Our captain asks,
". . . what good is our word?"

In a country made of words
We the people
Need allies.

In one nation under God,
Theirs and ours,
We should not have to fight
To keep our pledges to our allies
And our ally in our pledge.

It is a dishonorable discharge to us all.

Abstruse

Abstractions of Civilization

grow a Tree

but fell the black oak

the white oak and

the red oak

to make Floors,

first floor Deep and

penthouse Towering Transcendent,

and as Words less particular

expand in number and meaning

Man climbs out of his Cradle

and ages Wise and Philosophical 

but there is a Grave that lies in wait,

for what Civilization has been able

to stand its Ground without

the Black Oak

the White Oak and

the Red Oak.

     This poem grows out of my epiphanic confusion brought on by reading the following from The Story of Civilization:  Our Oriental Heritage by Will Durant.  ". . . Choctaw Indians had names for the black oak, the white oak and the red oak, but no name for oak, much less for tree . . . abstract terms seem to grow in a reciprocal relation of cause and effect with the development of thought; they become the tools of subtlety and the symbols of civilization."  But it seems to me that as civilization matures itself in abstractions, the ability to know the difference between an oak and a maple, much less between a black oak, a white oak, and a red oak, is civilization's dementia and ultimate demise.

Posted at Poets United Poetry Pantry #146.