To read the words is to live today
To breathe now unencumbered
To move about in a vital way
To rest deep in a slumber

To see the light crack through the tree
To witness sky blue in the dawn
To watch the sun fall in the sea
To observe the stars turn on

To play our games with old and young
To work and build and earn
To exercise our legs and lungs
To teach and train and learn

To kneel and offer thanks
To sit and ponder long
To stand upon the banks
To praise the skies in song

Free we are to live and love in this very hour
The valiant left their liberty for sponges dry and sour
Life’s riches we partake in joy for which we paid no price
No greater love, our nation’s friends, laid down in sacrifice.

Dejected to perfected—a spectrum I’ve elected
Selective, trek my thoughts weighing all the perspectives
Now collected, tip the scale, what’s projected?

Could be

A feckless speck of a man prepped to wreck this
Only pecks for success in his recklessness
Expects his neck in a pillory of correctness
Lost, done, worthless, bereft of acceptance
Of himself, dire, mired in deaf remembrance

Checked it.

Did it well, keen to dwell and reflect it
Self now swelled with the hauteur injected
Fail to quell the pomp conscience directed
Hail the tale, statues cast and erected
Til the gale swept ‘way strength unsuspected

A broken balance mistaking measurements but verified valid by itself so inerrant yet we merit as inherent as the spirit meant for cleric now heretic could be back to copacetic if we let it find

the middle

Where guilt and pride are so belittled the ego ceased to be a riddle.