An Interesting Perspective for the 4th of July; By Rod McKuen

[skeptic]

 

POSITION

 

Im neither right nor left

and certainly not center.

To me to be among

the silent majority

means to be among the dead.

And for me

not two or ten or two hundred

make up a minority.

Every man is such

because every man is different.

 

If I met a man

who looked like me

and thought like me

and walked and spoke like me

and was in no way

different from me

only then would I consider slaying him

for he would have stolen from me

all those truths

and all those lies

I'd found out for myself.

 

All the living

that had brought me here

that man would have erased

by being just like me.

 

But kill a man unlike myself ?

Not likely.

There might be something

I could learn from him.

 

There is so much I need to know,

why there are no butterflies

in the worlds backyard,

and when I find it out

I need to know

how to get them back.

 

Men trample beauty underfoot

like it was gravel.

These actions are confined

to no one country

but I resent it in my own

because I love my country.

 

Could it be

that men join clubs

as men carry them

for security.

But from what ?

 

My security is my country

and everything I am in life

and everything I know

and everything I care about

revolves around it.

 

And I live in America

and I find its face not ugly

except sometimes.

-from The Power Bright & Shining, 1985

[jdsmerud]

That certainly is an interesting perspective. As a retired special operations Marine I'll post my simple perspective in regard to this this. John 15:13, those that have been there know it, those that care will look it up.