Creative
Writers Showcase
Featuring
three poems by Milt Zerkin. Milt leads the Creative
Writers' Workshop of the Ethical Humanist Society
of Greater Chicago. For additional information about
the Workshop, call the Office at 847-677-3334.
FROM
YIN TO YANG
There's
no place it will just begin to flow
and slide along to where it will end.
Things and time pass from then to now
or wind around until the last beyond.
We've seen the dark-gray hours of night
melt into soft shades of morning's light.
So will those bitter tears of yesterday
dissolve to smiles when hurt fades away.
We know winter will soften into spring.
And if our anger fades away to loving,
then we'll find our friendships grow
when we allow a love for life to flow.
Aug
1971 Milton
Zerkin ©
“SO
WHY CAN’T WE ALL GET ALONG?”
During
the 1992 Los Angeles riots Rodney King stated,
“We’re stuck here together
for awhile . . .”
This, an eight-thousand-mile ball of inanimate
molten rock, soaring mountains, and churning seas
supports a mantle of interlocked cycles of life
under a blanket of wind-blown rain and clouds.
This life sustaining place is not just our home,
it will be a home for our children’s children,
who issue from the unbelievable joys of love.
An intimate embrace we share with someone special.
This life we create from spasms of coupled love
exists in endless varieties of color, size, and shape,
where each new life is dependent and nurtured
by a community of all the other living things.
This myriad variety of interdependent life
provides each sunrise with a wake-up excitement.
The exhilaration on hearing a newborn’s cry
or seeing butterflies dance in fields of flowers.
-
- - - - - - - -
But we have so many differences with each other,
all those with different color, size and shape.
The multiplicity of ways and places where we live.
So could it be possible for us all to get along?
This uncountable diversity of life we encounter
lends an excitement to each and every waking day.
The excitement of seeing and sharing something new,
of possibly learning to embrace our differences.
There is so much around us to see and do each day
that we’ll never find enough time to watch the sun
rise from across the blue lake through misty clouds
or listen to birds chatter and sing to each other.
“So why can’t we all learn to get along?“
1
Jan. 1993 Milton
Zerkin ©
FROM
THE BEGINNING TO US
Out
in the night skies the galaxies spin away the eons.
From our own Milky Way and to those that are closer
to the beginning of this, our sparkling universe,
and the faraway space of light’s trip through time.
Within countless galaxies giant stars were born,
that in their fusion furnaces they created
all of those minute atomic planets that are
the complex material chemistry of our universe.
When these stars burn out, they then disintegrate
and spew forth their countless atomic creations
into this universe that over eons reconstitute them
into new stars of which many have parented planets.
And so it was how our sun and this beautiful home
here on Planet Earth was born from this stellar debris
out of that multitude of those long ago dead stars.
In the fusion furnaces of those ancient stars
this family of minute atoms was created,
which became the miraculous confluence that is us.
23
April ’02 Milton
Zerkin ©
Reproduction
of this material is prohibited without express permission
of the author.
The
views expressed here do not necessarily represent
the views of the Ethical Humanist Society.
