By Ernie McCray

Photo credit: Flickr/Terryt1945

Are we ever living
in a freaked out time?
Like you got Donald Trump
running for president,
not in a cartoon, but in real time.
Then you got
folks mostly brown and black
being shot down in the street,
in fact,
by those who are licensed to “serve and protect,”
who, in effect,
don’t do either of that,
inspiring cries of “Blue Lives Matter”
and “All Lives Matter”
leaving “Black Lives Matter”
bearing the unmitigated blame
for all the shame.
It’s a new American game.
Then you got the afflictions
of War crimes
with drones flying
and children dying
due to inaccurate spying…
And the madness goes on and on…
And you wake up one day
and try to take your mind away
from the curses of the times,
looking for a writing prompt
online
and find
one that asks you to
spend a little time
using these three phrases
in the same poem,
in a rhyme:
“a culture of solitude,”
a “faithful blue sky,”
and “Where we still discover.”
Well, that should do,
as I, an only child,
grew up (with my mother
working night and day)
in what was truly “a culture of solitude,”
a member of the dreamers of the world
who, alone,
in their silence,
for their sanity,
give their hearts and souls permission
to dream,
every now and again,
of an existence
more genteel than the one
they find themselves in –
in my case
lying my little self,
on my back, on the grass,
in the shade of my chinaberry tree
in my front yard,
under a “faithful blue sky”
that was always there for me
with clouds that aroused my imagination,
home to a Sonoran Sun
that was just downright
nasty to everyone,
from the moment it rose
over the Rincons
to the instant it lowered itself
west of the Tucson Mountains
into a beauty
one would think
an impossibility
considering what it had
put desert beings through all day long,
making you dance and sing “Hallelujah”
when it was gone.
But in “a culture of solitude”
under that “faithful blue sky,”
you could leave that bothersome world
for moments, at a time.
Away from those who
looked at you
as you, to them, were: somebody
they didn’t want to do a figure eight
at the skating rink with,
or play shark island
or Marco Polo in the pool with,
eat a sloppy joe or have a seven-up
or a butterscotch milkshake at Dairy Queen with,
play Mama May I or Simon Sez with,
pray with, sit on the bus with,
jitterbug or do the hucklebuck with,
pick cotton with, work or sit on a committee with,
go to school with, vote with,
haggle over the price with,
and don’t even mention sleep
or walk down the aisle with
or have children with
or live in the same neighborhood with.
If it wasn’t messing with you
they weren’t down with it
a single bit.

But Oh! Oh!
This exercise was to
let me escape from such woes
yet sometimes bygones just won’t be bygones,
don’t you know,
when so much of what once was
still is because
the reality
is these social transgressions are not a priority.
However dreams of a more promising world
can still be dreamt
under a “faithful blue sky,”
in hopes that by and by
in, perhaps, “a culture of solitude,”
there can rise an attitude
“Where we still discover”
our sins,
shortcomings that have been revealed
to us over and over again –
the difference, wishfully, being
that we, finally, as a nation,
begin doing something about them.

But I’m not holding my breath until then.

• Bio
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Ernie McCray

I was raised in a loving and alive home, in a black neighborhood filled with colorful characters in Tucson, Arizona. Such an environment gave me a hint that life has to be grabbed by the tail as tight as a pimple on a mosquito's butt. With no BS and a whole lot of love. So, from those days to now I get up every morning set on making the world a better place. On my good foot*, and I hope my writing reflects that. *an old black expression

Latest posts by Ernie McCray (see all)

• Should Democrats, like Superman, Seek ‘Truth, Justice and the American Way’? - December 10, 2018
• Saying Goodbye to a Friend Who Gave Me a Helping Hand - November 28, 2018
• An Awakening - November 21, 2018