Lamont Palmer - A Future If We Dare

'All that we are not stares back at what we are.' - W. H. Auden



A birthplace came back: the homeland image.
I'd left, but escapism is fiction,

when the mind is born to stand on one place
of history. Feet are nomads (independent)

on the bottom of bodies. They grasp their
own agendas, staying fixed upon the lights

of ones viewpoint; the city which resides behind the
eyes: cleftnotes rising from said cities.

There is a future and a sentimental projection,
Each one is the hard side and soft side of life,

The gazebo, flipped over and crushed, or
Full of flowers, inviting in its emptiness.

My hands are the hands of family; my mother's hands,
my father's hands, inverted replicas of my own,

matches, as in one flowing species, and
the copies sent out into duplicate worlds.

It is recalling days wrapped in ribbons
or the burgeoning oceans bringing relief

to lives and dusty hearts. To gorge on predictions,
tends to kill, in their deceptive clothing,

or they can uplift one's consciousness till one can
see the burned tops of mountain ranges, or

know they are there; know that, within human grasps,
are peaks to purify the feuding lungs.

Childhood sank: sun into sea. An inner child breathes,
has his way, and the days roll, moved by direction.

Lamont Palmer

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-future-if-we-dare/