i swear this is the last of any thing remotely related to politics i will ever publish. i have given it up because it has ceased to make sense and relies on hate and personal and party ambition, NOT on how to do what is right for a diverse country, financially, culturally and in oh so many other ways. i’m not watching news except for local, sports and weather. i will vote but it will be difficult to choose because there simply no good choices on any political race. Just thought i should warn you.

i am 80, a year plus younger than Joe Biden, about a year and half older than Donald Trump. i recognized my synapses and thought processes no longer worked as well as they used to as i moved on from a decade ago. My ideas about things have been formed over 80 years of living, much of that is no longer relevant. The world has changed. The two major candidates share those things with me. Even if i had the backing, financial and public support, i would have difficulty in deciding what was best for my country, as in a number of situations, there isn’t a right answer, there are only choices of what could be the better answer. i would not run and if elected, i would not accept.

Having noted that, i am supposed to choose between two doddering, old, self-centered politicians more focused on their personal success backed by two parties who have nothing closely related to promote what is best for the country, but only to get the advantage politically. i have tried to make decisions on the parties’ platforms, but those platforms are only marketing bullshit bashing of the other side.

i certainly don’t have the experience to navigate the mined waters of no-quarter politics, but quite frankly, i would make a better president than the two old narcissistic farts with oversized egos. Just don’t vote for me.

All i ask is for you to consider what is your best choice between these two horrible choices. Unfortunately, voting for an alternative is like throwing your vote away.

George Washington was right.

you sleep in the next room;
i, tired from weekend tasks,
start to bed but stop
to look at Lisi Tang’s painting
striking me as a “lonely” painting;
a beautiful tribute
to the loneliness of
the vast and omnipotent sea
yet
there are two gulls,
beautiful in their flight together,
graceful, in syncopation,
juxtaposed against the vastness of the sea;
i see us, the gulls,
flying into the mist of the morning sea
aware of its vastness, its cruelty, its beauty,
flying toward infinity together:
a significant moment:
the two of us
flying above the sea of time.

Dear Mister Warren,

i am reading you again,
more thoughtful reading perhaps
buffered by the passage of Time:
your time, my time,
perhaps because
we come from near the kindred borders
of Kentucky and Tennessee
with limestone, pockmarked hills
of cedar, pine, oak, poplar, dogwood
and, of course, hickory;

lives reared by the hills,
farm gardens, several dairy cows
in the pasture next to the barn,
hogs in the muddy slop of the sty,
all of which did not know Time,
your time, my time
until it was gone.

The mockingbird trills another song
as the stars mock Time
but not in golden California
or the snow blotted woods of Connecticut:
did i write of stars mocking Time
or did i repeat what you said?

Does it matter with Time?

i am more often now older than Time,
antique words past Time,
lost
far from those rolling, curving rivers
of Water and Time
in the hills and valleys of the Shawnee
when deer and bear roamed the woods;
even then, the mockingbird
trilled its borrowed music
in our ear.

Time is forever and never
as it was then,
as it is now;
we will have our time with us
for we are in Time,
always and forever.

i have you to thank
for my thoughts of Time;
at least, it makes me gracious,
conscious of how Time, us
fit together.