Human Spirit, Battle Cry OR Who's Counting the Petals?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

Sometimes I despair of the world we live in. (Well, don’t you?) But despair never did anyone any good so, no matter how high the odds stacked against success, we have to try and stay positive.

True, it's never easy…

As I have said before - and dare say will continue repeating myself (as I often do) - if we can’t change the world, we can at least try and improve our own little corner of it, and trust that the ripples any change for the better make…will spread.

HUMAN SPIRIT, BATTLE CRY or WHO'S COUNTING THE PETALS?

Floods here, drought there, swollen bellies;
refugees from civil wars pleading aid;

terror taking place on our own TVs, world

rising above its being afraid

So what are the world’s governments doing?

All they can, we’re expected to believe,

so why tragic images we’re seeing of a world
wearing its heart on its sleeve?

Where horror hits hardest, a hurt laid bare;

beyond headlines, inconceivable pain;

where flowers at gravesides, petals like tears
for those battling to move on

Cash (still) flowing freely for wars, elections,

Big Business politics for generations ...

Copyright R. N. Taber 2004;2018

[Note: A slightly different version of this poem appeared in a 2004 issue of CC&D magazine, Scars (US) publications and subsequently in A Feeling for the Quickness of Time by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2005.]