For Terri-Jo
The birthday of my sister, dear,
Is also that of Tennyson
(Alfred, the lord, that is) who wrote
The famous "In Memoriam;"
He was the poet laureate
As popular even as the Queen,
When Albert died, on Alfred's words
For comfort, she was known to lean:
"I hold it true, whate'er befall;
I feel it when I sorrow most;
'Tis better to have loved and lost
Than never to have loved at all."
This also is the famous day
When LBJ signed into law
The Voting Rights Act; Earlier,
When MLK on TV saw
The Prez say, "We shall overcome,"
He cried, with such a day arrived -
A Southerner who'd said to take
It slow, now hope for change, revived.
The universe's moral arc
Is long, at least in human years;
Towards justice, though, it bends, though tears
Must fall, 'til light o'ercomes the dark.
Another "lord" was born this day
Who saved uncounted human lives;
By accident, he found that staph
Around a mold would never thrive;
For in a Petri dish one day,
Sir Alexander Fleming found
Some mold, a penicillium,
But no bacteria around;
"One sometimes finds," the doctor said,
The thing "one is not looking for;"
His find would millions' lives restore,
Who, otherwise, would live in dread.
We did, it seems, take one step back
On this day back in '45
When the atomic bomb first dropped;
That world war's end, then soon arrived;
But at what cost? The captain o'er
Hiroshima, observed begun
A horror that would haunt us all,
And wrote, "My God, what have we done?"
I cannot find the words this time,
With this week's images in mind,
For when you see, in war you find
There is no reason or no rhyme.
Today, perhaps, in looking back
To see where we've both failed, and learned,
The measure of each add, or lack,
Is when for neighbors' good we yearn.
Scott L. Barton
(With thanks to The Writer's Almanac for information about this day)
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