Old violence is not too old to beget new values.
– Robinson Jeffers (“The Bloody Sire”)
With ease, we have evolved to softer versions
of ourselves—no longer lean, Dust Bowl men
in coveralls waiting for work and a weather change,
sinew no longer strained to stretch the harvest
of endless furrows. Within earshot of lamenting
old men leaning on fences, I was part of a future
doomed with easy-living, and so I have been
by comparison, yet with little time for visiting
face-to-face, eye-to-eye. We have become immune
to the violence next door, alive in cyberspace, and
deaf to war—the clash of sword-on-shield or bigger
better guns barking how to cull the herd—with ease,
we have evolved to envy dumb animals and birds
in touch with the sky, yearning for ignorance
and bliss. And all the old values now lost to youth.
drycrikjournal 