The Rape Of The River (1938)

Lucid, on gravel bed
The river fled
Gnawing her rooted shore.
Snags formed a fishing ground
Where trout abound,
Haunting the river floor.

Cities her sides infect
Her course deflect,
Harness, enslave her, raped
Polluted, sewage swill;
Untainted till
Beauty her banks escaped.

Murky, on slimy stones
With murmured moans
Staining all that she touched,
Living yet dead, she fled.
Her tethered tread,
Hindered where buildings clutched.

- William Malewitz

Fulfillment, like happiness, has to be earned, not found.

Dreams And Reality

Dreamers dwell in distant realms
Unmindful of the tangled trails that test their conquerors.
Actors grasp the lurching helms
Of present deeds, and careful cruise where rash adventures
Were lost.

Some imagine martyr's crowns;
They picture death with torture; fairly feel the pain's intensity.
Deeds portray these shackled clowns
As weighted by human earthly scales, with standards set, eternity
To cost.

Bowed before the sword of scorn,
Or twisted on the rack of ridicule, how many preserve?
Dreams of conquest, fragile born,
Are trampled in the test of daily deeds, in earthly atmospheres
Are lost.

- William Malewitz, The Beachcomber

Are you working on the solution or are you part of the problem?

Beachcomber

(About my canoe, but knowing that I have been called the Beachcomber helps to understand this one)

Her battered bow attests a ceaseless search,
Each rapids run or portaged round
Through tunnels carved of conifers and birch
Till evening's campsite could be found

Her probing prow proclaims her singing soul.
As paddles pushed and drove her on
Till sunset sought each known, yet unknown goal,
And campfires searched the darkness and beyond.

Now outlined low beside life's surging stream,
A sacrament that's real and now
Attesting human presence, not a dream,
Significant that keel, that bow.

-William Malewitz, The Beachcomber

The world is made up of two kinds of people; the givers and the getters. I've never found an unhappy giver. I've never found a happy getter.

Train Whistles

Each time at a crossing
Train whistles intone
Their song with a feeling
So strangely their own.
From deep in the distance
Low moaning is heard;
The tone is entrancing,
Somehow I am stirred.

Again it is softer,
Night hushes the sound,
Till mellowed in shadows
My window is found.
There dwells in my mem'ry
Long cherished and dear,
A thought of my home,
When train whistles I hear.

- William Malewitz, The Beachcomber

Preaching a sermon is like hunting rabbits. They run in a circle, and you better stop them the first time around or else.