On this day, July 21, 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first person to set foot on the moon. This morning as I sat on my porch enjoying the early morning breeze before the heat sent me indoors, I could see a half moon hanging in the otherwise clear blue Kansas sky and I thought of that day so long ago, a day I remembered in a poem.

Early this morning, the last NASA shuttle landed. As a Star Trek fan from the beginning and as one who loved the space program, I feel the loss about the end of the program. The poem has relevance in many ways to what happened and is happening on July 21.

Near the pond the horses stand.
The spotted mare with her brown foal.
The brown mares, bellies big.
They barely move and when they move
They touch, nose to quivering
flank. Cold spring mornings
when ice rims the pond, their breath
is rime. A road runs beside
the field, over a bridge, twists away.
The road never breaks
their ease of flesh, the gracious
distance of that field, that pond.

A note: I wrote this poem years ago. This is a scene I saw every morning when I drove through Kechi on my way to work. Right now, with all the turmoil here at home and around the world I wanted a moment of peace. This poem gives me that. I hope it does the same for you.

It is a great life. I am more oblivious than the less,
dear mother, of the ghastly glimmering of the guns outside
and the hollow crashing of the shells.
Wilfred Owen, from his last letter home.

How sweet, how fitting it is to die for one’s country.
Horace

Poets are different, the poet talking on the radio says.
The pacifist poet who reads poems against the war.
The poet who rises at dawn to face the empty page,
to breath life into the circuitous connections
that once seen, seem obvious?

Is it that the poet knows there is no peace,
that the running forward into battle is the only salve
for a soul gone sour? This radio poet will
never see a front, never squint across the chasm
of enemy lines, never taste the sands
of foreign lands or slog through swamps
of verdant humid countries far from
the familiar. And yet, he writes against
the war, against sending the sweet-faced boys,
the too-wise girls into smoke-laden chaos,
into the gut-destroying bombs.

Crawling on their bellies through sand or mud
made sweet by blood left behind by their buddies.

“Dulce et decorum est
pro patria mori.”

There are poems and there are POEMS. The kind you learned in elementary school and remain with you, for good or bad, defining, for many, a genre that should be avoided at all costs. Or the kind that hit you straight in the gut and remind you, if you are lucky enough to have gotten this far, just how powerful words can be.

For those of you who are in the latter group – clinging to those gut-wrenching, mind-bending poems you just can’t get out of your mind – Split This Rock Poetry Festival, to be held right here in DC, you’ll want to put on your literary calendar.

Billed as a celebration of “poetry’s power as an agent of change,” Split This Rock brings together poets, artists and social activists from across the country – indeed, from across the globe – in a gathering whose goal is to pull the rigid chains of the political establishment. And what better place to do this than at the gravitational center of world power.

Mel Bancroft, author, poet, and inspirationalist, is hoping to introduce the world to her incredible craft Dec. 15th, 2009 (available here). She has been seen on Tribes Magazine, the Los Angeles Sentinel, America's number one African-American newspaper, and Regal Magazine, the Preeminent Online Magazine for African American Men.

It's only fitting that I Introduce you to a women who's incredible passion for writing and storytelling is going to effect audiences worldwide when her book is released.

For now, I would love for you to read the first 3 chapters of her upcoming hit and leave comments and questions that you would want her to address. I will be interviewing and featuring her on my personal blog as well as both Amplifyyourvoice and Everydaycitizen.

Langston Hughes is a favorite of mine.

Many things have changed since he penned his prophetic and challenging poem, "I, Too."

Reflect.

Give thanks!

"The future is no more uncertain than the present."

Walt Whitman, 1819 - 1892
Poet, Philosopher, Essayist

There are a few people on this earth who exhaust the superlatives we try and use to explain how wonderful they are.

Maya Angelou is such a person.

This clip is an introduction of her book, Letter to My Daughter. Her wisdom, her eloquence, her grace and charm are just breathtaking. I just wanted to share this with you.

We may not have her with us much longer, but what a treasure we have among us while she is still here!