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"On a Starry Night: 56 Poems Waiting to Go for a Walk" is an ebook of poetry,
written by an American teacher who has taught English in several countries,
and who believes in the first global generation in human history.
These poems are for young people around the world, as they build a new and better world.
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To Lave: To Wash Clean
Water laves its way through the world,
Touching all life:
It courses up the vascular pipeline to the top of the tallest sequoia.
Water laces through the leaves of the rustling maple.
It drifts as perfumed mist from a freshly opened apple blossom.
Water oozes as a protoplasmic soup,
Cleansing and feeding and helping to propel the peripatetic amoeba.
And water races as a red river through a tiny tubular canal,
Cleansing and feeding and helping to propel the peripatetic thoughts
Wandering among the cells of your brain.
From capillary to continental river,
From thunderstorm to heartbeat,
Water laves its way through the world.
Listen to John Slade read To Lave: To Wash Clean
The Global College of Democracy
No one ever started a war over a wind turbine.
The wind belongs to all of us, not to nations, nor to stockholders.
The wind, and the sun, would teach us to share, not to hoard;
Would teach us to learn from each other, not to stifle ingenuity.
The wind would bring our global children together, as together they master
The challenge of clean energy.
The wind, the sun, do not call foreign children “collateral damage.”
The wind would give our spirits a genuine frontier, better than the moon,
For both the challenge and the blessings would belong to all of us.
The wind and the sun know no trade barriers, no ethnic hatred.
They are waiting for research institutes and local factories
To spring to life in Africa, long forgotten by Detroit.
The wind and the sun knock on all doors equally.
We quarrel over oil, and claim to fight our wars for democracy.
What is more democratic than the wind turning turbines for all, equally,
Providing electricity for all, equally,
And thus jobs and classrooms for all, equally?
Let us learn, equally and together, how to build
A clean and prosperous world.
No one ever fought a war over a wind turbine.
Listen to John Slade read The Global College of Democracy
Homecoming
A Soldier’s Prayer
God, you are too far away for me to thank.
I want to grab your hand with both of mine
And squeeze it with gratitude.
I want to kneel on the green earth
And tell you with more than another daily prayer
That my heart aches with undelivered love.
I want to knock loudly on a church door,
I want to climb the steps to the organ loft
And run my fingers fervently up and down the keys,
I want to lift the roof with my thunderous joy,
Not for the pilgrim below in the pews,
But for you.
I want to look the author of the unfolding story of my life in the eye,
While I thank him for every long chapter and precious verse.
Come close, God.
I want to grip your shoulders and insist that you listen while
I tell you,
Thank you for bringing me home.
Listen to John Slade read Homecoming
The Path
A path along the ocean cliff in York Harbor, Maine
Is as smooth and scooped as the soles of my feet,
Sunk in the turf in strawberry fields,
Paved with roots and oyster shells and stones worn flat
By three hundred years of people still living in green-shuttered hamlets.
The path becomes a boardwalk,
A narrow bridge with a handrail over a crack in the rocks,
A stile with a step missing.
Further north than stairs down to a beach,
North where there are frozen bays,
And no sound,
And ancient snow,
It is there.The path goes on to England and etches her Cornwall cliffs,
Calling on hamlets where fishermen sleep and rowboats fill slowly with rain.
Follow on, and do not be surprised if someone you meet
Has never heard of Dickens, or Chaucer, or Matthew.
The path goes back before such recent times.
And still, men walk only a short ways
From harbor to harbor
And count their journey full.
Listen to John Slade read The Path
Your Hand
In a dozen ways your hand I hold:
With a shy and tentative touch,
With gratitude for offered friendship,
With a clasp of professional agreement.
A different touch each day,
Offering gentleness, proclaiming trust.
In more ways than all your ten fingers
Do you take my hand, and I take yours,
Though but a week have we known each other’s first reaching.
Listen to John Slade read Your Hand
The Gift
You drive the long and crowded road at dusk
That you drove today the other way at dawn.
The girl of hopes and dreams is now a husk,
The songs of love have dwindled to a yawn.You have a sacred choice, good friend of mine,
Regarding those to whom you will bequeath
The air you breathe, and other gifts divine.
Fourscore and ten, a prayer, then underneathThe earth you’ll be. Your legacy is what?
You give the kids the assets that remain.
Or turn the wheel and leave this asphalt rut,
And chart your course by nature’s future gain.Bless the children born for a century or more,
By nurturing the Earth; her health we must restore.
Listen to John Slade read The Gift
Copyright © 2011 Woodgate International, all rights reserved.
