Aubrey Lieberman Selected Poems and Essays

  Counterpoint I am hiking on an esker orientation Northeast to Southwest  quite high above the kettles, combes and drumlins of Plymouth, Massachusetts  It is a cool and cloudy autumn day orange and yellow oak leaves  and light brown pine needles forming a magic carpet on the paths  and between the tree trunks  It is as if I am walking on a melody twisting and turning rising and falling  as the drizzle taps softly Abruptly the music is discordant at the boundary where the land drops steeply  toward the highway where a fence has been cut Here I find an abandoned encampment  in a clearing bounded  by rotting tree trunks and fabric and plastic  and rain soaked pillows near two faded tents I cry for the people who needed this shelter for the children who played on this sacred ground with the sticks and the stones and whatever they could find while hoping for a meal I move away half blinded by tears The music becomes gentle again Now it ...

  Dreaming On It is the fourth of July again It is 2025 It is a day of mourning On this day we remember the high aspirations of the Founders of this nation On this day we remember that the Constitution and Amendments were written to free us of the constraints of autocratic rule On this day we remember that during the course of the decimation of the rights of the nations long established on this continent during the millennia before the Europeans arrived that we were striving to be free yet enslaved Africans were imported to create the agricultural machinery that would become a pillar of the economy As a consequence of our moral ambiguity hundreds of thousands of us perished in the bitter Civil War over the abolition of slavery close to a century after the Declaration of Independence the declaration of our inherent right as human beings to pursue happiness As a consequence of our developing economic and political heft we contributed to victory over tyranny during the two great wars ...