November
by T. A. Fry
November is the month,
Most trees are brown and bare
The leaves are down,
They’ve lost gold crowns
It seems almost unfair.
The tree invested time
In nurturing each leaf
Then let them go
Next spring to grow
New ones in relief.
Do the barren trees
Rest in a belief;
It’s better to live
Like it’s better to give,
Than be the ones to receive?
The brown leaves all objected,
Lying lifeless in the dirt;
“We fed the tree
Sugar for free,
We gave until it hurt.”
I am a fan of nursery rhymes, parables and general silliness with words. Word play, puns and rhymes are ways our brains smile. How many of you can remember the pledge of allegiance by heart versus Humpty Dumpty? We remember silly rhymes far better than we do free verse because the rhyme and meter guide our memory.
Nursery rhymes also have a long history of subversion, a way for people to rebel, to hide political satire or treason in plain sight and teach it to their children.
Humpty Trumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Trumpty had a great fall,
All of his lawyers and all of his men,
Couldn’t put Trumpty in the White House again.
I have been working on a draft of a children’s book the past couple of weeks, cooped up at home because of COVID. November kind of popped out of my brain one morning a couple weeks ago and although it doesn’t fit the current children’s book I am writing I am fond of it as a parable.
History is generally on the side of the victor and eventually the law. I am confident history will not be kind to Mr. Trump. Starting January 20th, he will no longer have the legal protections afforded him as President and will have to give an account for himself as a civilian. I believe the sheer lunacy of his claims around winning the election and the constant lies he and his lawyers Tweet on a daily basis are not because they believe he will prevail in the courts and remain President. I don’t think that’s his intention. I think he is trying to solidify his dwindling cult following and whip those that remain into a such a frenzy around a conspiracy so far fetched, so impossible, that it either has to be believed as faith or rejected, because no actual evidence exists. Trump’s defense of claiming victory is like writing a mathematical theorem on the existence of God, it can’t be done, no physical proof exists. Trump’s lies are so far beyond the realm of common sense that they become a test of faith. Trump is like a child standing before his Mother with chocolate on his face, claiming to know nothing about a missing cake, wanting to know if Mother country loves him more than the lie he is telling?
Trump is hoping to solidify his status as a cult leader and in some way that will protect him when federal prosecutors file charges and eventually convict him of serious crimes. Trump is not interested in politics or being the leader of the GOP. I don’t believe he is interested in leading the government. Trump is interested only in being the leader of his cult. Trump is hoping to subvert the law’s of this country in ways that are far more sinister than messing around with the transition of power between administrations, far worse than being rude or shrewd or rejecting the norms of our Democracy and generally being difficult. Let’s call what Trump is doing what it is; fascism. Trump is conducting a a very real civil war for his own personal gain. The question is whether it will remain a war of words or something far more dire, something far more consequential than it has already become in the damage it has done to our democracy and our unity as a nation.
I find the definition of civilian prophetic, given Mr. Trump’s civil and criminal legal predicaments hanging over this head, not the least of which are his fraudulent tax filings. I hope the vast majority of Americans will look at the golden leaves of our democracy on the ground, turning brown and realize it is the tax payers and common stockholders in their 401K and pensions, who bail out companies and individuals like Trump when they go bankrupt. It is the person working as a cashier in the grocery store who pays their full share of their taxes who finance the shenanigan’s of rich men’s accountants, who do not pay their fair share. Ultimately it is we, as citizens of a society, who pay for the repeated business failures of men like Trump; the cost of those losses are taken out of the pockets of all, in higher costs for goods and services.
Let us hope as a civilian he will be seen as unprofessional by the vast majority of Americans, not just the 80 plus million majority of legal voters who cast legal votes for democracy, who voted for Biden. Let us hope that Trump will be seen as the emperor with no clothes, with no golden crown, who has fallen from his ledge of power. I hope main stream Republicans will start to look on Trump as a criminal who does not belong in the GOP. I hope they will realize that it is unbecoming of the traditions of our nation to support a fascist who wants to rewrite an election in his own favor for his own personal reasons. Its time we all distance ourselves from this man, a man unworthy of anyone’s loyalty. Biden is offering a flower of peace, a white lily. Let’s hope we can all put it in a vase to admire while its still in bloom.
civilian
noun
- a person who is not on active duty with a military, naval, police, or fire fighting organization.
- Informal. anyone regarded by members of a profession, interest group, society, etc., as not belonging; nonprofessional; outsider.
My Pretty Rose Tree
by William Blake
A flower was offered to me,
Such a flower as May never bore;
But I said, ‘I’ve a pretty rose tree,’
And I passed the sweet flower o’er.
Then I went to my pretty rose tree,
To tend her by day and by night;
But my rose turned away with jealousy,
And her thorns were my only delight.
Fourteen Lines 