War and Peace

I'm going to share a couple of poems that I've written as I contemplate the civil rights movement as well as current conflicts on Martin Luther King Day. Much was accomplished by this remarkable man, but so much remains to be done in the fight against inequity and ethnic hatred. It seems that mankind as a whole just can't learn from the past, and greed and intolerance shape the world we live in.

As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "Nothing can bring peace but the triumph of principles."

Here are my poems:

War and Peace

Life and love and joy and peace

and happiness abound;

Yet so does hatred, war and strife

and fighting on the ground.

War and peace and good and evil

seem married to each other.

From day one through history

Man has sought to kill his brother.

Mothers weep for children slain

Wives mourn their spouses lost.

Heads of State when war is done

Don’t like to count the cost.

For soon it all begins again

Upon some foreign shore.

Never learning from the past

They just commit to more.

Sacrificing not themselves

But mothers, dads, and sons

Daughters, wives, and husbands

Are armed with bombs and guns.

Those who long for peace and pray

That common ground be found

Cannot staunch the flow each day

Of blood that soaks the ground.

It’s in the heart of every man

And woman and their brood

To wage an endless battle

‘Tween evil and all that’s good.

Until there is a victory won

By tolerance over greed

Love and peace will never win

O’er hate’s insidious seed.

We each must fight the battle

In our own heart and mind

And to our inner selves be true

If peace and love we’d find.

How Long Must the Darkness Prevail?

How does the world go on turning

When hurting and grieving, we fall?

The incredibly strong human spirit

Rises to answer the call.

The pain and the suffering around us

We notice when we feel the blow,

But the sorrow and pain of today is

Not new to the world as a whole.

As long as the world’s been in motion

And people have felt hate and fear,

Violence has been perpetrated

In both faraway places and near.

Just one thing can possibly stop it

As long as the world goes around:

Hearts filled with love and compassion

In all of mankind must be found.

Respecting the rights of all others,

Considering each others’ pain,

Allowing to each his own tenet

Would permit peace and freedom to reign.

Both poems written and copyrighted by Janet Muirhead Hill

www.janetmuirheadhill.com

P.O Box 2885, Norris, MT 59745

The poems may be reproduced and shared for free. Please give credit to the author when doing so.

True Fiction for child victims

No matter how one feels about the war in Iraq, all must surely agree that the children who are left behind are the innocent victims. As I watched news clips after the invasion of Iraq, I felt deep empathy and sorrow for the children pulled from the arms of a mom or dad, and in some cases, both, after a prolonged and tearful goodbye. I listened to a mother left behind with three preschool age children who at first missed their father. When he did not return right away, they refused to talk about him, for it was easier to forget him, than to suffer the pain of his "abandonment." When a new boy started school with my grandchildren, I learned that he had come to live with his grandparents when both his parents were deployed to fight in Iraq. 

How does that feel? I asked myself. But I knew, just from agony of homesickness I suffered from a two week separation from my parents when I was nine. And they were not that far away. Just multiply that experience a hundredfold or a thousandfold, and I'd have an idea. What if they never came back? was my next question. How could I know what that was like? I had recently lost my mother and five years before that, my dad. I know the ache of missing them. But I'm an adult. My parents were in their eighties and their deaths were not unexpected. I could only imagine how painful it would be for a nine year old to lose a parent. 

But imagine I did, getting into the heart and mind of Danny, a fictional nine-year-old boy, as best I could. He is a rancher's son, and very close to his father. They worked and played together, and when Danny asked for a horse of his own, his dad could not refuse him. The horse, Dragon, becomes Danny's pride and joy and constant companion until the day his father dies. Then he can't look at him anymore, sure that it was the expense of the horse that forced his dad to join the Air National Guard, go to Iraq, and die in a fiery plane crash. Blaming his horse and himself, he withdraws from everything. 

The story continues as the loss is compounded on his family, (himself, his mother, and older sister) each dealing with his or her grief privately. Financially unable to hold on to the mortgaged cattle ranch, they move to Denver to live with Danny's grandparents. 

Can Danny adapt? Will he survive this additional loss of everything he has ever known. Will he get his "Dragon" back? Will his family, torn apart by deep personal sorrow, ever regain the happy unity they once shared? When Danny confronts the "enemy," an Iraqi classmate in the Denver school, will blame and hatred overwhelm him?   

The answers may be found in "Danny's Dragon" by Janet Muirhead Hill in book stores or online at www.ravenpublishing.net.