The fall in the northern states of the USA and in Canada is much more colorful than in England. The sky seems to be more vividly blue. You can have warm dry periods when the leaves underfoot are very crunchy to walk on and since most of the insects have run their course these days of Indian summer are a joy.
In 1966 I was a recent landed immigrant. I had a job in engineering but it was not going well. The math involved in the project that I was working on was difficult and I had yet to find a promising approach to the problem. I missed my folks. There was no one familiar that I could touch or talk to.
Joan Baez and Bob Dylan were singing about lost flowers and young men where have they gone... There was student unrest in the states that would lead to Kent State. Young men were coming here from the States to avoid the draft and they were being accepted without discrimination. Some of their parents could cross the border at Buffalo or Windsor to visit their kids on this side. There was far more war reporting here than in England even though Canada was not involved. I suppose it was what has become known as a policing action. Whatever.
One night, feeling sorry for myself, I sat at the old desk in my dimly lit room and just for an evening I became a young draftee whose options, if he ever he had any, had run out and he was about to descend into the cauldron that was Viet Nam.
My Poem,
PRELUDE TO NAM
We gazed up through the shifting leaves onto the sky above,
A cloud passed by and hid the even blue,
A falling twisting golden dancer drifted on the breeze,
And though our hearts were full of joy we knew.
A bird still sang his sweet refrain from somewhere in the boughs,
We watched him as he paused and changed his stance,
And then an icy hand reached out upon the autumn wind,
No longer did his song make our hearts dance.
I turned and saw the pensive smile upon her lovely face,
Instinctively our hands reached out to touch,
If only time would really stop at moments such as these,
A longer time with her would mean so much,
The summer of this year had been the finest we had known,
Those happy days of joy and full content,
It seemed like all eternity until the day we met,
The end was near and time would not relent.
No words were spoken for a while as on the ground we lay,
The thoughts of yesterday were still so grand,
It would be soon that I would have to say to her farewell,
And go to fight upon a foreign land.
If only man could see the folly of his warlike ways,
These words have been repeated through the years,
But ideologies arouse the jingoistic thoughts,
Faint cries of love fall down upon deaf ears.
We walked upon the leaf-strewn path down to the country lane,
The setting sun displayed a golden hue,
The shadows of the reaching branches danced upon the ground,
And though our hearts were full of joy we knew.
Rupert 1966.
In 1966 I was a recent landed immigrant. I had a job in engineering but it was not going well. The math involved in the project that I was working on was difficult and I had yet to find a promising approach to the problem. I missed my folks. There was no one familiar that I could touch or talk to.
Joan Baez and Bob Dylan were singing about lost flowers and young men where have they gone... There was student unrest in the states that would lead to Kent State. Young men were coming here from the States to avoid the draft and they were being accepted without discrimination. Some of their parents could cross the border at Buffalo or Windsor to visit their kids on this side. There was far more war reporting here than in England even though Canada was not involved. I suppose it was what has become known as a policing action. Whatever.
One night, feeling sorry for myself, I sat at the old desk in my dimly lit room and just for an evening I became a young draftee whose options, if he ever he had any, had run out and he was about to descend into the cauldron that was Viet Nam.
My Poem,
PRELUDE TO NAM
We gazed up through the shifting leaves onto the sky above,
A cloud passed by and hid the even blue,
A falling twisting golden dancer drifted on the breeze,
And though our hearts were full of joy we knew.
A bird still sang his sweet refrain from somewhere in the boughs,
We watched him as he paused and changed his stance,
And then an icy hand reached out upon the autumn wind,
No longer did his song make our hearts dance.
I turned and saw the pensive smile upon her lovely face,
Instinctively our hands reached out to touch,
If only time would really stop at moments such as these,
A longer time with her would mean so much,
The summer of this year had been the finest we had known,
Those happy days of joy and full content,
It seemed like all eternity until the day we met,
The end was near and time would not relent.
No words were spoken for a while as on the ground we lay,
The thoughts of yesterday were still so grand,
It would be soon that I would have to say to her farewell,
And go to fight upon a foreign land.
If only man could see the folly of his warlike ways,
These words have been repeated through the years,
But ideologies arouse the jingoistic thoughts,
Faint cries of love fall down upon deaf ears.
We walked upon the leaf-strewn path down to the country lane,
The setting sun displayed a golden hue,
The shadows of the reaching branches danced upon the ground,
And though our hearts were full of joy we knew.
Rupert 1966.
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