The waters are steadily flowing
in America's rivers and streams,
The sun's still committed to rising
and shining its powerful beams,
The hawk still flies in the sunlight,
mountains rise from valleys of trees
And America's constantly growing -
Just like you and me.
We want to save the rivers,
the same goes for the sea,
We're concerned about extinction,
as well as the air that we breathe.
As we sit in the silence and listen,
while time is passing us by
America's slowly changing,
Right before our eyes.
The stars and the stripes are still flying,
in our land of the brave and the free,
With hope and courage still rising,
we strive to help others in need.
We're glancing ahead at the future,
as we plan for what it will be,
With America constantly changing -
Just like you and me.
In our disappearing paradise,
we desire a reprieve,
The America we used to know,
protect it should be our creed.
As we sit in the silence and listen,
while time is passing us by
America's slowly changing,
Right before our eyes ...
Still …
The waters are steadily flowing
in America's rivers and streams,
The sun's still committed to rising
and shining its powerful beams.
The owls still hoot in the moonlight,
the eagles and whales sing their plea,
and America's constantly changing -
Just for you and for me!
© 2008 Joy A. Burki-Watson
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Author notes
just for you & me ...
A contest entry
- Clean and Simple by Peripatetic.
1500 points, ended October 20, 2008, 19 entries
• next poem in this contest, remove from contest
Please take time to share your comments ...
Comments
1 - 6 of 6
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The poem speaks of both hope and concern for the future of the country with understanding that whatever comes will be the country we will have for better or for worse.
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The older I get the more I realize that the only thing constant IS change. I just hope that the growing pains are not so severe that we can't live with them.
Sincerely,
Leo Long
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Excellent
This poem made me think, -- and it is a beautiful thing to read.
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One thing about this poem, unlike politics, it's right down the middle. Conservatives can read it and agree and so can Liberals. True, each will attach their reasons for the changes, but each will agree that it is changing.
Having said that, the only truth about America might be that it changes, seems to constantly change and yet in the end, it comes out with all those hopes and dreams and our visions of what it can be, intact. Look at all the changes since 1776, some small, some major, many catastrophic. Ideologies change, needs, desires, interpretations, but it's an ebb and flow and eventually whatever recedes, comes back again to that center of what we are.
Of course in the span of our individual lives we just see change, not how it flows back, that is too large a time period to be seen by us. So we worry when we see the life we are familiar with becoming unfamiliar.
People worry about religion, immigration, moral values, ideals, lots of other things, and with good reason, to some degree it affects them, and yet in the end, that flow back to what America is will occur.
Wow, I didn't realize I had an optimistic bone in my body!
Wonderful poem by the way, it caused that little pedantic moment of mine, proof that I liked it...on several levels.
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This is agreat write Joy...
you have a great optimistic feel for your country, portrayed here in this perfectly balanced and lovingly worded poem...the poem rolls and flows in a very gentle way, you have kept beauty uppermost here while not detracting from the fact that it is all changing, and our concern for things we lovingly preserve in our memories may dissappear one day, albeit, a slow transition...as you say, we are changing too, adapting, evolving it's a natural process, nature has its own cycles; God has his own plans, we can't change those things, but we are duty bound to work with nature and not against it...there's a lot we can do, I'm glad you've avoided political issues...it would be like describing a baseball match in the middle of the garden of Eden!
thanks for sharing and good luck
John
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I like the multiple look at your country, how you remember, how you wish, how it is and how it is changing. You have drawn timeless images of nature and set it all in a gentle swaying form.
There is a reversal which I find awkward here
"The America we used to know,
protect it should be our creed."
I like the reprise with modification in the last stanza, the circle is satisfying. Good luck!
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