September 22 – On This Day
The sun shines directly on the equator
A balance of dark and light
The inexorable slide to the nadir
Begins in earnest tonight
Every evening light retreats
As dark seeks to rule the day
And then on the very brink of defeat
The sun shifts back our way
We are so like nature
Our moods are like the night
And at moments of worst behaviour
We suddenly see the light
We apologize, we buy flowers
We regain our balance and then
Like days of decreasing hours
We fall short again
My failings this day are on display
Oh I know I’ve a ways to go
I hear it’s “World Car-Free Day”
Driving, listening to radio
How have we come this far?
Traffic a tragic infection
There are more than a billion cars
(and all at this intersection)
In 480 BC, The Battle of Salamis
Xerxes of Persia lost to the Greeks
Without that defeat, it’s beyond me
What mom would have packed every week
What’s with this day and rope?
Nathan Hale’s murder is timeless
And Salem girls lost all hope
Punished for having vaginas
Ben Jonson for murder indicted
But there was a mitigating factor
“I told him to speak it as I write it!
For Christ’s sake, he was just an actor!”
And on the streets of San Francisco
Sara Jane Moore became unmoored
Knocked off her feet, her man she missed, though
I just don’t get it….Gerald Ford?
OK, we didn’t get to see Nixon tried
Because of that ridiculous pardon
But if her aim was true and the President died
Rockefeller’s in the Rose Garden
Remember when it felt it couldn’t be worse?
Nixon, Reagan, Bush One and Two
We could not have prepared, no way to rehearse
The Apocalypse coming into view
On this fair day came Michael Faraday
What he did I will humbly abridge:
“Electromagnetism”. Without him no way
Could we hang kid pics on a fridge
National Geographic’s very first issue
I was a boy who perused it well
Alone in my room (with some tissue)
Oh what joy in going to hell
Yogi Berra is out at the plate
The best baseball has known
And so overcrowded was his wake
Everyone stayed at home
Irving Berlin’s measure had a rest
And then he was no longer with us
But for him America’s unblessed
And he wrote the soundtrack for Christmas
The public finally gets
To view the Dead Sea Scrolls
Born are Bocelli, Nick Cave, Joan Jett
I’d love to hear that trio
Yes, it is the equinox
Halfway between extremes
May we sail safely between the rocks
And if only in our dreams
May we hold to one another
To ward off winter’s sting
We witness the fall of summer
But may it ever be spring