Daily Poem: Lines for a Hard Time ~ Gena Ford
Lines for a Hard Time
~ Gena Ford
There is no website or even a Wikipedia entry for Ms. Ford. If you are aware of one, please let me know.
First published in May 1967, this poem is, sadly, still relevant.
Evil does not go always
by dark ways. On any hot
summer day, cleanshaven
it may stride across
a public place and head
purposefully for high
vantagepoints.
What whisper
hisses in the inner ear
take cover? Ah, and then
the boy is dead, others dead
or dying, and the evil
laps out in bits of hot
lead across the nervepools
of the nation.
We are sick
in our littered streets
and high places. Worms twist
in our labyrinthine skulls.
We are frightened by bland
facades.
The losses are always
personal. A phone, rings;
a father becomes less than
the sum of his grief. Could we
say better than his own words,
And we will die as well . . .
Spiral upward into All Love?
Good man, good grieving man,
all men have lived in evil
times, though few have known it
absolutely. We persist.
We love ourselves as often
as we can. And send our sons
to walk out in open day.
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