“Country Communication” by Penny Duncklee
retreat and return
to an insular precinct
experience shared
of a proximate cause
common ken
tribal instinct
conveyed blood to bone
old familiar moralities
imprinting underside
surface of skin
final chapters of fiction
come filled with tense drama
but real life wants peace
at day’s end easy sunsets
untroubled by conflict
the sameness a haven
against changing times
best to live with one’s own
and to die among friends
in the smile of their light
tell the world to fuck off
its false progress
a thing to be loathed
keep the faith with a
close-in geography
front porch exchanges
that ratify values
repeating what ancestors
said in their prayers
for an unfailing future
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“Those retreats of prayer and contemplation have something so congenial to the mind of man that, perhaps, there is scarcely one that does not purpose to close his life in pious abstraction with a few associates serious as himself.” – Samuel Johnson
Poesy plus Polemics 
Love this! The words transfer me back to my simple Alabama upbringing and the comforts of simplicity that I tried so desperately to escape from.
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glad to know that it worked for you – thank you
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A masterful reflection on sanctuary – a place both familiar and thankfully unrefined . . .
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we inevitably long to go home again…
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The mailboxes express community. I well remember the front porches in my mother’s small Alabama town where relatives and neighbors gathered to fan themselves and visit on hot summer afternoons. I loved listening to their stories.
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it was very much the same in my boyhood urban neighborhood
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Truth/reality has always been found on the front porch. A problem is, it’s difficult, to impossible (at least where I am) to find those on the front porch anymore. It was the classroom of morality, reality and wisdom, now the school is shut. Like you, I surround myself with like-minded, like-hearted, like-seeing, and though my circle is very small, leaving me alone on more days than not – I’d rather sit alone on my porch, then walk with countless in the streets peering at phones and cheering on the progress. We’ve regressed, yet far too many either don’t realize it, or don’t know what to do to stop it. It’s nothing difficult, there are no instructions, simply stop believing the garb, stop being a slave to their illusions and know in your heart, soul and mind, that what we think we see isn’t what’s to be seen. We’d all know that if we were still meeting on the porch. Great piece Paul, as always!
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how we got here, I’ll never know – despite so much information to be had, we’ve never been so easily fooled
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It’s mad! I think (just my opinion) that we got here through decades worth of heinous testing and planning, and that this plan was set into motion many decades ago, and that the masses fell for it, as “they” knew they would. Even I did at the onset, though I remember working in Manhattan, 27’ish years ago, one of the very first assistants to get, learn and use “Windows” – then in IT, one of the first to get a cell phone, and then one of the first to get a home computer and go “online.” At that very point in time, I vividly recall telling my father “we’re in trouble, something very bad is coming.” I actually felt doom in the pit of my stomach. I tried to explain it to him, but he didn’t understand (he does now, we speak of it often these days). At that time (27’ish years ago), I was receiving it, using it, I was even, at first, enjoying it – but was in awareness that I was also immediately changed by it, addicted if you will – and my intuition was twitching, I knew something massive and life changing was on the way. Yet, even though I knew immediately, I lived with that uneasy feeling for many a year, but sometime over the past 10 years, even more so over the past 5-6 years (suffering truly is the key to awakening), I began to understood what was happening and literally opted out, dropped out and ripped off the veil from my eyes.
Why do so little see exactly what you’ve said (and said so well). I’m in complete agreement of it. Due to “opting out,” I don’t live with or sync with the foolishness – and there’s so much more of it going on than we know. I SEE what’s happened, and happening, and live my life as excluded from it as possible (though not thoroughly – as it’s so mad that some of it is now essential). Excluding myself from it as much as possible has made a be a bit of an anomaly, an outcast, someone many don’t understand. I refuse to live in, or accept, the illusion. We’ve been, and are being, deceived, utterly dumbed-down, sped up and mugged … and the masses are completely blind to it.
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P.S. The mailboxes were absolutely perfect … long gone are the days of rushing to the mailman for the letters written from far away – an experience filled with excitement and merry. As they sped up the receipt of mail (which unlike REAL mail is no longer private – as anything online is considered public information), they also sped up time. Our time and experience here is short enough, we don’t need, nor do we ask for it to, be sped up. Bring back the mailboxes.
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well said – I share your views
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Ode to a time machine huh? If only ….
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Laughed out loud at the F-off.
The struggle between comfort and progress is a pain in the ass and sometimes overwhelming.
Peace to you.
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glad you enjoyed it, keith
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Such great expression of that amazing conflict. I think I like most of the old stuff. New-fangled hasn’t stood the test of time…
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well said
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