As a father, husband, teacher, coach, man, writer, jack Lutheran, late-mid-life-elder, ne'er do well, and espresso addict I find myself tethered to more responsibility, commitment, and distraction than, as a younger man, I thought I would carry. So I write this wonderfully encumbered surprise of a life that I have been given. I see grace and I see atrocity; I respond writing odes to what I love and rants against what I abhor. If I lived in a cave I would paint these on the wall.
The young man
So fresh into his strength
His power over others
Admires the lethality
Of his weapons
The blue sheen of his
Rifle
The old man
Blood on his hands
Remembers
And will hunt
But never kill
Beware the old man
Who never grew up
Who still
Glorifies the sound
Of a fist
On breaking bone
The thrill of going to battle
While he waits behind
On his gilded throne
For the first blood
Of the young man
To spill
Onto the waiting
Earth
