Sonnets

Stop the Seeds from Getting Sown

[The words of this sonnet are printed below.]

Partisan media are inciting hatred and violence, polarizing a democratic, peaceful nation, and helping autocratic, fascist leaders rise to power who use their positions to inflame the situation to the point where citizens take up arms against people they no longer consider fully human, people of another race or culture or people who disagree politically.  The media and leaders and their backers create a crisis situation that gives them the excuse to unleash a civil war and slaughter millions.

That was Rwanda.  If you live in America in 2020 and don’t feel alarmed reading that description, I recommend you watch the film Sometimes in April.  It is worth doing anything to prevent it from happening here or anywhere else ever again.

We need not only to change the structures and systems, such as the ability of partisan media to take over a market without regulation providing restrictions and balance, but we also need to be aware of the seeds of fear, hatred and violence in our culture, our government, our homes, and stop them from growing, or from getting sown.

One of the moments in Sometimes in April that made my blood run cold was when the hero finds out that his family is on the list to be killed even though he is in the military and of the approved race. It could happen to anyone. I could imagine it happening to me.  It reminded me of a saying attributed on the internet to many different sources:

Solon (the Lawgiver) c640 – c556 BC Statesman of Athens, writer of its compassionate legal code:
“Wrongdoing can only be avoided if those who are not wronged feel the same indignation at it as those who are.” from Greek Wit (F. Paley) found on http://sqapo.com/aphorism.htm

The film helped me feel as if I were among those being wronged.  It helped me love my neighbor as my self, in true oneness.  I wrote this poem several years ago in response to the film and the genocide and the dangerous situation I saw building in America that today is starting to explode.

All of us who believe in the global ethic shared by all religions need to act now and transform society to live by the laws of compassion for the vulnerable and oppressed, love of neighbor, the Golden Rule in all its formulations.  We need to speak out, we need to organize, we need to vote and we need to watch the seeds and… Continue reading →

Reflections On War and the Military: “Training Flights” and “Hanging Between Two Dying Ways”

I share two sonnets below, “Training Flights” and “Hanging Between Two Dying Ways: A Lament,” both from my collection “Sonnets for the Struggle for Peace, Justice and the Care of the Creation.”  I am publishing them here to follow up a facebook exchange that you can see below about the recent use of F-35 war jets to honor medical workers treating coronavirus patients.  This is a long introduction, so if you are more interested in the sonnets, skip to the end of this page.

Many reasonable people disagree with my feelings about war planes overhead and about militarism and modern warfare.  Some of those people are in my family and among my friends, and I respect them.  Their reasonableness and wonderfulness as people does not change my position, but it makes me want to explain myself. Continue reading →

And Here

[The words of this sonnet are printed below.]

We need to change our society’s way of seeing and thinking about the entire creation, we need to evolve a new collective way of seeing and thinking about ourselves and our place in the order of things, in order to change our society’s destructive way of life.

Ancient spiritual traditions envisioned the cosmos being born out of divine love.  They teach us that we are to love the creation as its creator does.  Love of neighbor, love of the creator and the creation—these have been handed down to us by our wisest elders as the highest natural laws.  The collective, eternal flow of life is a stream of self-giving love, and for those who live in that Tao, individual life is a stream of many such acts over a lifespan, serving our time and place.

The goal is to create the conditions conducive to abundant life for all, for the common good—a sustainable harmony and an equitable and just society.

This is within our reach.  We have made stunning advances in understanding and technology, and humanity seems on the brink of making the needed developmental shift to the mature perspective of the wisest spiritual teachers.  We could evolve finally to have the heart and mind of Christ and the Buddha and Gandhi and King, and the wisdom and passion of Greta Thunberg and Malala Yousafzai and Mother Theresa and Dorothy Day.  We see millions of people now moving toward that vision of compassion and oneness.  We have the tools we need.  We can do this.  And we must do this, for life on earth to survive.

The beautiful, joyous truth is that we each can help make this transformation happen by opening our own heart and mind to be transformed, and by living our own lives in our own place more lovingly.  We can do this right now, right here…

And Here

And here is where I heard the hermit sing.
And here is where the ermine popped through snow.
And here is where the golden eagle’s wing
sent benediction to the land below.
And here is where I stood to sing of songs
and presences and blessings we pass through.
I do not know to whom this land belongs
except by this one law I know is true:
The spirit of creation makes a claim,
love’s birth, love’s joy, love’s struggle to survive.
We live to serve and celebrate love’s aim.
There is no other cause to be alive.
And here we sing our thanks as loves appear.
And here we make our place by loving here.

copyright 2020 Thomas Cary Kinder

The Harder Task

[The words of this sonnet are printed below.]

I recorded this poem in the summer of 2019 which seems like another world, another age of the world.  It seemed then as if the worst of the climate crisis era was still ahead a decade or so. Now we are in it. This is what it looks like: tens of millions of climate refugees; the erosion of democracy and the rise of fearful autocratic entrenched nationalism; the rich grabbing more and the poor suffering more and inequity worsening; ever increasing ecological devastation; accelerating species extinction; and yes, pandemics and economic collapse and social upheaval. We are in it now.

Some of the wealthiest are trying to escape, as this poem suggests, but millions of people of all kinds are working hard to change the world to reverse and heal the damage we have done and create a global society that is just, equitable, sustainable, resilient and at one with all peoples and all nature.

This is “the Harder Task.” Thank you so much for all you are doing for that cause. Please make up your mind now to do even more, to give it all your time, energy and resources. This is the greatest struggle any generation has ever faced, and it will take even more dedication and effort than World War II. Choose an organization and join together with others, contribute what makes you feel good.  Do what you love to do the best that you can do it for the cause. Thank you!

The Harder Task

Plop a banana peel into the compost
and watch the fruit-flies scatter through the room.
The bucket is their world, all else, the moon
and Mars and distant planets that will host
them till they can return.  What distant post
can we fly to when our world meets its doom—
when asteroid zooms in, or human plume
or magma ash turns earth to ice or toast?
It seems we have two tasks to undertake:
first, finding places that will serve as well,
and how to get there.  That task is unnerving.
The next one’s worse.  Somehow we have to make
our life more worth the saving—learn to dwell
in kindness, love and beauty worth preserving.

 

Love of Light Song

Love of Light Song

O Light, how much you love the mighty trees,
those massive trunks of maple, ash and oak
that cast up vast translucent canopies
beneath which long past generations woke
and we wake still, we lower, lesser things,
we dwellers in their filtered sun and shade.
We hear the wind or thrush high up that sings
the praise of greatness that your light has made.
But we sing, too, our humble, quiet songs
of ray pierced pools that make the rock moss shimmer,
of stained glass ferns that soar above the throngs
of praising beetle, worm and water skimmer.
You love us all, you give each all your gifts,
you bless the slightest song the humblest lifts.

Poetry Salon on Resurrection

Poets Garret Keizer, Sydney Lea, Mark Hart and Tom Kinder

I participated in a Poetry Salon at the Congregational Church in Newbury, Vermont, on May 4, 2019 along with Sydney Lea, Garret Keizer and Mark Hart.  It was hosted by the Rev. Dr. Michael Caldwell at the Newbury, Vermont Congregational Church and was on the theme of resurrection, more as a law of nature than religious doctrine. I read from upcoming books in my Sonnets for the Struggle series and from my upcoming collection, Sonnets of Celebration and Love.  I share expanded reflections and poems from that day in the half-hour video below.

You can find poems by the other three inspired, excellent poets on their websites, https://sydneylea.net/, https://garretkeizer.com/, and http://www.markhartpoetry.com/. Thank you to Janis Moore for the photo of us at the Salon.

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