Designing the World We Want How Human Beings Work
Poem: Sometimes
- December 26th, 2008Sometimes
(The poet has expressed her wishes that her name not be used when this poem is quoted or re-printed in personal blogs like this one.)
Reprinted from Good Poems. Selected and Introduced by Garrison Keillor. Viking Penguin: New York, New York. (2002).
Sometimes things don’t go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don’t fail;
sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.
A people sometimes will step back from war;
elect an honest man; decide they care
enough, that they can’t leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.
Sometimes our best efforts do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.
We at Peace By Design take this opportunity to thank you for reading our thoughts and ideas this past year. We wish you and your loved ones every blessing during this holiday season and in the coming New Year. And may all your fields of sorrow melt under a golden sun.
Peace.
January 25th, 2009 at 12:03 pm
Dear Joy,
I just wanted to drop a note to let you know how much I appreciate your efforts. Of the many, many e-newsletters I get all the time, yours is one of the few I always cherish and take the time to savor.
I also wanted to share a little story about this poem. When I got your newsletter, I forwarded it to a very large email list I am on, and got several appreciative responses. My favorite was from a Jewish woman from Israel, who said that it managed to break through all the numbness, discouragement, fear and paralysis she had been
experiencing since the Gaza siege started. It had made her cry, and cry, and finally she felt like she could breathe again. She thanked me for this beautiful gift, and said I had made a difference.
As for me, I still can’t even tell this story without choking up.
Thank you