Hope this works…… Audio link of another of my poems. Let me know if it does work To Claim The Highest Peak
The spring edition of 2013 Mosaic featured my poem below “If I Could Change”
Click here http://kingmosaic.ca and go to page 8
It seems that the poem I put in my last post has touched many nerves and I have probably received more positive feed back on that one than on any others. This comment from a former Rhodesian/Zimbabwean now living in South Africa was the most potent for me and truly helps me trust that my often criticized views on the place of humankind in the Universe are not as isolated as some would have me think.
“Jim this is absolutely brilliant …It flows so easily and beautifully whilst driving home the sword deep within our guilty souls …”
Here’s one I wrote recently for the global event (over 700 venues around the world) “100,000 Poets for Change”. This one has received very good reviews and will unquestionably be in “The Songs and Verses Volume II”.
If I Could Change
If I could change one day it would be this day.
I’d make it the day when we could see the wrongness of our destiny
So we might try to change the course we’ll take.
So we might stop and look behind with eyes that can no more be blind
To all the depredation in our wake.
So, through our blood stained tears of guilt for all the wastelands we have built,
We’ll mourn the wondrous beauty that’s now lost.
And we’ll account our selfish ways of unchecked greed that filled our days
No more in terms of profit, but of cost,
And recognize the debt we now must pay.
If I could change one mind it would be my mind.
I’d start to believe that I’d be heard and so would shout out every word
That told of where our attitude was wrong.
I’d start to trust these thoughts I bear that yet, with effort, we’ll repair
The damage we’ve inflicted for so long.
With confidence I’d find anew the strength to share with all of you
This true direction humankind should go.
And, never doubting I might fail, I’d lead toward that Holy Grail
Of balance; though that path I do not know,
But trust, that with your help, we yet will find.
If I could change one heart it would be your heart.
I’d open it up to what once was, to love the Elder ways because
There lived the time when man and earth were friends.
When all of nature, all of man, fit well within that master plan
Ordained to satisfy our mutual ends.
Not as we see our world’s now turned where we ignore the lessons learned
From evolution’s omnipresent school.
Where we believe we have the right to take all we desire on sight
And shatter every natural golden rule
The universe decreed right from the start.
If I could change one dream it would be our dream.
I’d centre our vision toward the day when we might wake to quietly say
We’ve found the new tomorrow at our door.
When we can see we can remain amid The Balance we’ll sustain;
So we can also be sustained once more.
That here’s a place where we can live where, yes, we still can take, but give
Yet more back to the Earth than that we took.
That here no more we tear apart her very soul, her very heart
Upon which all of us depend, but look
Instead with eyes that see how wonderful our lives can be
Unthreatened by our own unsated greed.
Now driven not from want, but basic need;
Allowing earth to heal instead of bleed;
To worship not the harvest, but the seed,
And so from avarice be ever freed
To join once more the Universal scheme
If I could change one day it would be this day.
I’d make it the day we’d start to see the rightness of our destiny
The day we changed the course we choose to take.
The day we stopped and looked behind upon the years when we were blind
And smiled that they are now all in our wake.
The day we made the pledge that we are never going to break.
To join once more The Balance, and within it ever stay.