Standing just to the left

By Craig Kirchner

Natural disaster, disease, bankruptcy

can reduce people to nothing, homeless,

hungry, no two stories are alike.

Man evolved as a specie realizing that

banding together was necessary,

sharing food, talents, and strengths to survive.

Remote tribes and outcast homeless Americans

live to survive – in jungles and on our city streets,

abandoned by family, friends, neighbors, us.

The wealthy could ease some of this problem,

see to a roof overhead, a meal, a hope that

tomorrow will be more than avoiding death.

Working together became government,

providing services, education, defending sovereignty,

abolishing slavery, feeding the hungry.

Governments that cut services, diminish education,

refuse to feed the hungry stand in the way

of evolution, hold up the betterment of man.

Such government graduates to creating hunger,

homeless and inhumane conditions with wars,

and policy based on greed, hate and fear.

America is celebrating its 250th anniversary.

Man is commemorating 50,000 years of language,

behavioral modernity and complex thought.

We can access information immediately,

travel almost anywhere, including the moon,

purchase almost anything that comes to mind.

America’s exceptionalism is a declaration of

equality, a disbursement of power across three

branches of government, leaders elected for character.

The traits that separate man from lower primates,

and now from one another include art, use of tools,

an understanding of history, mortality,

and empathy for all life on the planet.

America’s ability to care is still there,

standing just to the left of its government

Craig Kirchner is retired and living in Jacksonville, because that’s where his granddaughters are. He loves the aesthetics of writing, has a book of poetry, Roomful of Navels and has been nominated three times for Pushcart. He was recently published in Chiron Review, Main Street Rag, The Wise Owl, Breathe, The Wilderness House and dozens of others. He houses 500 books in his office and about 400 poems on a laptop, these words help keep him straight.