A Holiday offering to all friends everywhere...

[David Sparenberg]

THE YOUNG

Young men and dreamers, young women, bold and beautiful—be joyous in your frolic and meditations. Beside the smiling of your sunlit fields the shadow of death glowers. Do not fall into the blackhole of time. If you must shed your courage, drop clear beads of gold into the common treasury of freedom. Do not let violence stop you.

Dream beneath the swaying melody of one True Earth Tree. How much the unexplored and oh the welcoming that awaits you!

True, the world is full of sorrow and confusion. But you are the difference, dressed in desert rags and indigo. Without you, the winds blow but the message remains mute.

True, the world is tortured by brutality and tyranny and terror are waiting for confrontation. While powerfully walls and monuments of hardness do not endure before the dance and song of youth; no more than ice or snow before the budding green of spring.

Codgers and granddames on park benches of fading longevity, around the forces of nature are recurrent, and yours are the gifts of memory. Help tomorrow to stand.

In solitary wishes, I feel the autumn with autumn’s telling chill and fingers of autumn twilight sketching maps of unlived liberty into my parchment skin. Mine is not the calligraphy of the future. That is the lovemaking of the young. And it is true—it is so very, very true—the world is filled with renewal… and the soul-felt happening of sacred poetry.

David Sparenberg
21 Dec. 2011