The fog comes
on little feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.
I chose to lead off my blog post this month with Carl Sandburg’s famous haiku entitled Fog. This poem has been a staple of needed reflection simplifying confusing times in my life. As I lean against my Lighthouse today, fog has again come upon me. My understanding light is harder to see. I rely on the hypnotic fog horn announcing, in a rhythmic base, the closeness of unseen rocks confusing my calm waters.
If you have followed along this past year, you know I have been attempting to share my inner travels to self-enlightenment. Well this month it all started clearly enough. I took my faith in the existence of God to the scientific analysis of the Great First Cause(Divinity) or The Great Principle. “Principle is that which creates, constitutes,governs,sustains and contains all.” (page 5 Science of Being by Eugene Fersen) I was prepared to explain and share a dissection of each word in that phrase; creates,constitutes,governs,sustains and contains all.
But fog caught me unaware, so silent it had come upon me. When I tried to see further yet into my introspection, I was distracted; all I saw was our President tweeting or saying something about his love and warmth for a brutal dictator. What fog is he sitting in? Must be a first in our country’s history. As chance would have it I began reading David McCullough’s biography, Truman. About four hundred and thirty pages in to this almost one thousand page biography, I was surprised to read about President Truman’s good feelings about Joseph Stalin. Along with Winston Churchill, Truman was meeting with Stalin in July of 1945 outside of Berlin at Potsdam. After meeting Stalin, Truman wrote, found Stalin to be polite, good-natured, business-like “honest-but smart as hell.” Other written opinions had Stalin uncommonly wise and gentle. Joseph E. Davies, former ambassador to Russia, had written in 1941of Stalin , “A child would like to sit on his lap and a dog would sidle up to him.” Even Eisenhower would describe Stalin as “benign and fatherly.” President Roosevelt had commonly called him “Uncle Joe”.
McCullough goes on to highlight that he (Stalin) was directly responsible for destroying millions of his own people by either forced starvation or outright murder. Oh, the Fog of War! How it can distort reality. Is that the same fog, today, blanketing Washington? Has mistress fog of war ever really lifted her bloody skirts high enough for us to collectively see more clearly? List all the wars and battles our country has faced the past 70 years. I think not.
The Fog of War, I believe continues to numb us to the every day violence in our lives. The bullets are lost in the fog we walk through until, too late, we are stopped by one at work, shopping, at school, or sadly at play.
Truman thanked England (through Churchill) for heroically standing up to the Nazis during the early years of WWII. If Britain had not stood firm Truman opined, we would still be fighting Germany on the shores of our United States that summer of 1945.
Well President Truman it is 2019 and we are indeed fighting a war against each other, (daily), in your United States. We need heroic leadership as shown by the Greatest Generation during WWII against the thrust of fascism. Our national dilemma will only be mitigated by standing up to the narcissistic hate and vitriol spewing from our supposed leaders. Then the fog of war might begin to melt away in the morning sun of hard compassionate decisions and subsequent actions that rise above our self inflicted wounds from fear and hate.
Are there other fogs on the rocky shores of my Lighthouse? Why yes!
Too personal to share much detail here but Chemo Fog, some days, is an unwanted visitor. A side effect of the courageous fight against cancer being waged by a family member.
Another fog approaching me is the Fog of Aging. I fight that fog and you all help by letting me write and share my thoughts with you! An ode to that fog is contained in the following poem I penned this year.
Wrinkled Fog
Where fog are you going?
Life’s meadow still not clear. Oh,
I see a tail of a wisp trying to
hide behind miss willow.
And still no memories of you.
Fog circling her trunk,
Changeling almost done almost done.
Dewdrops leave as earrings
Beamed up by parted suns.
And still no memories of us.
Furrowed wrinkles, crows feet cornered eyes,
Mirrored tired gaze falls on chin cleft-ed scars.
Moments ago questions long forgotten
Settle under blankets of reflected somethings.
And still no memories of me.
Thank you for reading.