Murfin Calendar Coincidence Verse— International Day of Peace/Autumnal Equinox

This is another one of the calendar poems inspired by random, or not so random, coincidences of dates, usually discovered as I am in a mad scramble for a blog entry topic.  It first appeared in 2013 when two events fell on the same day.  Today, like most years, the astronomical event falls a day ahead to a proclaimed one but the calendar serendipity is still close enough.

Tomorrow is the Autumnal Equinox and the first day of Fall in the Northern Hemisphere.  Here in McHenry County, we are riding out a nearly ideal string of late Summer weather with brilliant blue skies and the landscape still verdant.  As if on cue tomorrow the wind will swing around from the north and daytime temps will fall into the low 60s. Today is the Autumnal Equinox and the first day of Fall in the Northern Hemisphere.  Here in McHenry County, we are riding out a nearly ideal string of late Summer weather with brilliant blue skies and the landscape still verdant.  Tomorrow the wind will swing around from the north and daytime temps will fall into the low 60s. 

Today is the International Day of Peace, so proclaimed by the United Nations every year since 1982.  Since 2001 the date has been fixed to September 21 instead of the original third Tuesday of the month, which was also when the UN General Assembly begins its annual session. 

An Ukrainian police investigator walks among the site of graves in the woods near a recently liberated city of civilians and soldiers killed during the Russian attack and occupation.  Near by mass graves were found with bodies showing signs of execution and torture were found.

But peace is hardly the order of the day.  The Russian War on Ukraine, the largest armed conflict in Europe since World War II drags on.  Although Ukraine seems to have re-gained the initiative recapturing significant territory from the invaders, the ultimate result remains in doubt, the largest nuclear power plant in Europe is still in harm’s way threating wide-spread catastrophe, and a desperate Vladimir Putin could escalate the conflict and directly attack Ukraine’s NATO allies.  This week mass graves and evidence of wide-spread war crimes and executions were uncovered in areas recently liberated.

Meanwhile, China has made threats against Taiwan and President Joe Biden has said that he would commit U.S. troops and forces to the defense of the island in event of aggression.  Around the globe dozens of regional and internal conflicts simmer, each threatening to escalate into something bigger and deadlier.

The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has re-set the Doomsday Clock to just 100 minutes to midnight.

Among its grander visions, which must have seemed distant even to the founders of the Day of Peace, was at a call for an annual one day cease fire of on-going hostilities.  I can recall no armies ever standing down, but perhaps I missed something.

The rapid deterioration of the environment—melting ice caps, rising seas, hurricanes, heat waves, fires, droughts, and famine—also displaces millions creating international migration crisis, destabilizing governments, and creating conflict over scarce and vanishing resources—the perfect recipe for war and more war. 

And here at home we seem teetering on the edge of Civil War.

No wonder this old piece is still relevant.

The well intentioned gather at a Peace Pole.

International Day of Peace/Autumnal Equinox Eve

September 21, 2013

 

The immanent equinox advertises itself

            this morning with crack crisp air,

            elderly maples beginning to rust at the crown,

            a touch of gold on borer doomed ashes,

            mums and marigolds,

            hoodies up on dog walkers in shorts,

            all under a prefect azure sky—

                        you know the one from the Sunday song

reminding “skies everywhere as blue as mine.”

 

The globe teeters on the edge of equanimity,

            ready to balance for an instant between night and day,

            seasons, yesterday and tomorrow,

            a perilous, promising, moment.

 

The poor creatures swarming over its surface,

            fancying ourselves somehow its masters,

            alas, bereft of any balance….

 

From the Wishful Thinking File,

            institutional division—

Festooned with doves and olive branches

            brave words on blue banners,

            a speech here, a lovely little vigil there,

            an earnest strumming of guitars,

            litanies sung, mantras chanted,

            kind hearts and gentle people…

 

The creatures go about our brutal business,

            blithely ignoring it all—

                        proclamation and equinox alike.

 

—Patrick Murfin

 

International Day of Peace/Autumnal Equinox—Murfin Calendar Coincidence Verse

This is another one of the calendar poems inspired by random, or not so random, coincidences of dates, usually discovered as I am in a mad scramble for a blog entry topic.  It first appeared in 2013 but the calendar serendipity is annual.

Tomorrow will be the first day of Autumn but here in McHenry County sky will be an opal haze from the drifting smoke of Western wildfires.  Many of us are still hunkered down in our homes and may be cheated of glory march of the season.  We are bombarded with terrible news.  

 

Today is the International Day of Peace, so proclaimed by the United Nations every year since 1982.  Since 2001 the date has been fixed to September 21 instead of the original third Tuesday of the month, which was also when the UN General Assembly begins its annual session.

This year low grade wars bubble underneath American consciences in all of the old battle grounds of Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.  The Saudis bomb and starve Yemen.  The Israelis bomb Gaza whenever they get the itch and raze Palestinian homes and villages at will.  The Turks shoot the Kurds and the Russians still are at undeclared war with Ukraine.  China crushes democracy in Hong Kong.  And thanks to Trump’s whim to end Obama’s Iran nuclear deal and Kim Jung Il’s erratic sabre rattling  the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has re-set the Doomsday Clock to just 100 minutes to midnight.

An American made aircraft drops American made bombs on Yemeni civilians.

Among its grander visions which must have seemed distant even to the founders of the Day of Peace, was at a call for an annual one day cease fire of on-going hostilities.  I can recall no armies ever standing down, but perhaps I missed something.

The rapid deterioration of the environment—melting ice caps, rising seas, hurricanes, heat waves, fires, droughts, and famine—also displaces millions creating international migration crisis, destabilizing governments, and creating conflict over scarce and vanishing resources—the perfect recipe for war and more war. 

And here at home we seem teetering on the edge of Civil War.

No wonder this old piece is still relevant.

The well intentioned gather at a Peace Pole.

International Day of Peace/Autumnal Equinox Eve

September 21, 2013

 

The immanent equinox advertises itself

            this morning with crack crisp air,

            elderly maples beginning to rust at the crown,

            a touch of gold on borer doomed ashes,

            mums and marigolds,

            hoodies up on dog walkers in shorts,

            all under a prefect azure sky—

                        you know the one from the Sunday song

reminding “skies everywhere as blue as mine.”

 

The globe teeters on the edge of equanimity,

            ready to balance for an instant between night and day,

            seasons, yesterday and tomorrow,

            a perilous, promising, moment.

 

The poor creatures swarming over its surface,

            fancying ourselves somehow its masters,

            alas, bereft of any balance….

 

From the Wishful Thinking File,

            institutional division—

Festooned with doves and olive branches

            brave words on blue banners,

            a speech here, a lovely little vigil there,

            an earnest strumming of guitars,

            litanies sung, mantras chanted,

            kind hearts and gentle people…

 

The creatures go about our brutal business,

            blithely ignoring it all—

                        proclamation and equinox alike.

 

—Patrick Murfin

 

Calendar Coincidence Verse—International Day of Peace-Autumnal Equinox

Calendar coincidence--Peace and Autumnal Equinox.

This is another one of the calendar poems inspired by random, or not so random, coincidences of dates, usually discovered as I am in a mad scramble for a blog entry topic.  It first appeared in 2013 but the calendar serendipity is annual.

Tomorrow will be the first day of Autumn but here in McHenry County we will be soaked by the remnants of Tropical Storm Imelda, the same monsoon that has drowned Houston in more than 40 inches of rain so conditions are not just as they were described in the doggerel below. 

Today is the International Day of Peace, so proclaimed by the United Nations every year since 1982.  Since 2001 the date has been fixed to September 21 instead of the original third Tuesday of the month, which was also when the UN General Assembly begins its annual session. 

This year it is also the day after the International Climate Strike which was timed to both reflect the precarious balance which is now tipping us all to ecological destruction just as the Autumnal Equinox tips us irrevocably toward winter and to get the attention of the United Nations Emergency Climate Change Summit.  The rapid deterioration of the environment—melting ice caps, rising seas, hurricanes, heat waves, fires, droughts, and famine—also displaces millions creating international migration crisis, destabilizing governments, and creating conflict over scarce and vanishing resources—the perfect recipe for war and more war.

Those conflicts smolder across the globe and we are also now on the cusp of a possible war with Iran carrying water for both the Saudis and Israel 

Among its grander visions which must have seemed distant even to the founders of the Day of Peace, was at a call for an annual one day cease fire of on-going hostilities.  I can recall no armies ever standing down, but perhaps I missed something.

International Day of Peace/Autumnal Equinox Eve

September 21, 2013

The immanent equinox advertises itself

            this morning with crack crisp air,

            elderly maples beginning to rust at the crown,

            a touch of gold on borer doomed ashes,

            mums and marigolds,

            hoodies up on dog walkers in shorts,

            all under a prefect azure sky—

                        you know the one from the Sunday song 

reminding “skies everywhere as blue as mine.”

The globe teeters on the edge of equanimity,

            ready to balance for an instant between night and day,

            seasons, yesterday and tomorrow,

            a perilous, promising, moment.

The poor creatures swarming over its surface,

            fancying ourselves somehow its masters,

            alas, bereft of any balance….

From the Wishful Thinking File,

            institutional division—

Festooned with doves and olive branches

            brave words on blue banners,

            a speech here, a lovely little vigil there,

            an earnest strumming of guitars,

            litanies sung, mantras chanted,

            kind hearts and gentle people…

The creatures go about our brutal business,

            blithely ignoring it all—

                        proclamation and equinox alike.

—Patrick Murfin

Summer Solstice/Father’s Day—A Slightly Out of Sync Murfin Verse

The Green Man or Oak King of Midsummer.

Two years ago Father’s Day fell on June 21, which was Summer Solstice.  Such calendar coincidences move me to the commission of poetry like a prune juice and X-Lax smoothie facilitates an explosive bowl movement.  Depending on your outlook the results may be equally as messy and disgusting.

This year Solstice falls on Wednesday.  Some ancient peoples marked the occasion with such astonishing precision involving monoliths, mounds, and monuments that it has enabled a basic cable cottage industry of pseudo-science documentaries speculating about aliens.  But for many others, the precise date was hard to pin down.  Changes to the length of day were too subtle to be measured precisely.  Instead they spread out the celebration over a cluster of days under various names.  Modern Pagans, who have made up a lot of stuff to fill in the gaps of what is known call those days Litha after and old Anglo-Saxon name for a summer month.  Taken together the various pre-christian celebrations are often lumped together as Midsummer, as good a name as any.

Was Father’s day, at least subconsciously set in spitting distance of Midsummer if not on the precise day?  Probably not.  But there are those who say that there is no such thing as pure coincidence.  Call it kismet or serendipity, it was enough to set my head spinning and impel my fingers on the keyboard.

 

The last picture with my Dad, the old woodsman, W.M. Murfin in Alberton, Montana in 1989.

Summer Solstice/Father’s Day

June 21, 2015

Perhaps, after all, I am the Green Man,

          and by Father before me

                    who took to the woods with rod and rifle

          and his father before him

                    who grew strawberries by the porch

          and the fathers before  him

                    who were orchard men in Ohio

          and back to those earlier yet

                    who pulled stones from Yorkshire fields

                    for their masters.

Save the complexion, I look the part enough

          with shaggy goatee, wild eyebrows,

                    and neglected hair which could sprout

                    oak and ivy.

But my wild forest years are well behind me,

          I plant nothing but my feet on the sidewalk

                    and my butt in a desk chair,

          I raise nothing but questions, concerns,

                    and indignation,

          my fertility was snipped away

                    long decades past

          my virility—don’t make me laugh,

                    no Goddess  awaits in a glade

                    under the triumphant Sun.

Perhaps I am not the Green Man after all

          just an old fool and fraud,

          but, hey, isn’t that all that is needed

          to be just Dad instead.

—Patrick Murfin

As a new Dad with Maureen in Chicago, 1983