Joseph Farley, US

 

 

Free Verse   Celebrating Independence Day, July 4, 2010   Freedom Calls   freedom calls a bird at night freedom calls a bird at dawn freedom calls a bird at noon freedom calls a bird at dusk freedom calls freedom calls and only a fool fails to listen     Flag Day   Flags sprout up this time of year to glower at the flowers, entangle the passing bird in stripes. Who can forget the red white and blue stacked like crosses at the hardware store? Boys, shirts abandoned, parade the streets with toy guns, salute the waving form. Summer's breath is on their backs, July beckons with the heat of wars.     Independence   We are a nation of heretics, born from ancestors who fled the laws and religions of their old homes. Here they were free to blaspheme and imagine a different face for God, until one heresy or another grew strong enough to back up its version of the truth with thugs and push free thinkers farther west to displace the thoughts of locals whose cosmology was questionable enough to the new arrivals to be kicked aside. The point is this: blasphemy is in our blood, so is tolerance and intolerance so is non-conformism and conformism. Somehow these opposites have managed to exist with few major explosions. Nations of the world and newcomers to these shores, must understand and accept that American freedom includes the freedom to offend, and the responsibility to tolerate, that does not mean you can't complain, but death threats and acts of violence is not part of the vision, for on man's faith is almost always another man's blasphemy, so if we can't grit our teeth and get along we might wind up shooting lady liberty when the bullets start to fly.