Setting My Sights

Setting My Sights

Yes, I’ve been conspicuously absent. I’ve been working night and day to establish our  BlueHome Artworks consignment shop within the New Vrindaban Community.  I started a blog there as part of the online store/website: The BlueHome Blog, where I talk about the value of thinking small, in terms of supporting small and local businesses, artisans making hand crafted products, agriculture, etc. Village economy, really.

So you can check that sight and blog out if you’re inclined to. Here, I intend to maintain my personal stuff, including my writing, my spiritual quest and ponderings, etc. I know; it’s a summer picture, but the current view is a little bleak right now, since we don’t have snow yet—at least not any that’s stuck.

So here’s my new poem. It does, in fact, contain some of those ponderings. I hope you enjoy it. As always, I invite you to comment if you feel like it.

Setting my Sights

Jesse S. Hanson

My Father is dead but my real Father lives

My real Father is dead but my even more real Father lives

Jesse is gone but then he never was

I never could find him

Just some vague familiarity with someone who always disappointed

Where is my family, my kin?

I wait for them on the shore where the boats come and go

But not them, no

Where are my dogs and my horses?

I don’t see them run and bark and whinny

Over the hills, willy-nilly

Where are my girls, where are my boys?

My songs are dead but my real song sings

My dreams are dead but my real dream waits

For me to wake up

From dead and dying dreams

I have to set out

I have to go on a fearsome adventure

I have to set out across the wilderness with only faith

Since I lack courage

Since I lack vision

Since I lack identity

I’ve always had to cry as the years have gone by

Where are my rolling prairies?

Well, those men have plowed them

Where are my towering hills and splendid valleys?

Those men cut them down, dug them out, they were sold out for baubles

And a plastic future

Where is my beach, my little house on the ocean?

All washed up, built up, soiled, overgrown, weeds and litter

My land is dead but my real land lives

My Father is buried but my real Father lives

My real Father is cremated but my more real Father lives

Jesse is gone but then he never was

I have to go to another land

I will grow weary of this childish tantrum

These sentimental tears

I will become forgetful of all things behind me

Become tired of mourning a life that did not care for me

A home that was not there for me

I’ll set my sights on the unknown distance

Across the ocean of this lost existence

My Father is dead but he’ll be forgotten

My real Father has gone on ahead

My even more real Father is here waiting.