Men and The Goddess

I wrote this as part of my Morning Pages yesterday, Memorial Day here in the US. It came out as a “prose-poem” but as I keyed it in it feels better in verse form. It is about remembering. It is about freedom. It is about sacrifice but more about living.

Memorial Day

Have the fallen died in vain?
Are we no longer free?
Have we ever been truly free?
Is the “home of the brave and the land of the free”
Just a relic of the past?

Brave or foolhardy?
Free or continuing under the yoke of tyranny?
Here we are again;
Did we ever leave?
Or are these concepts, words, deeds, creeds
Just so much chaff blowing in the winds of change?

The only realm of freedom
Is the inner realm.
If we cannot be free of our tyrannical minds
We can never be free.

Free countries are an illusion.
The outer can throw up a mirage of freedom;
The spoken or sung words can create a sense
Of belonging, power, courage, pride.
None of it is real; none of it is lasting.
It is all fake news.

I am at the threshold of letting it all go.
I choose to focus my mind inward:
The only view of some deeper reality
Hidden from most of us,
Often hidden from me as well.

I know it is there.
I have witnessed it;
I can sometimes catch a glimpse of it.
When I do I am convinced it is
The only “thing” that matters.

This “thing” is the only true Reality
Beyond all other senses of reality.
It is the spark of Light,
Not born,
Never dying,
Here before the beginning,
There after the ending
Which can never come.

It is forever free.
And I hold that spark within me,
As all beings of Light do.
We can never be bound;
We are forever free within this Light.

Memorial Day is this knowing;
It is remembering who we are.
May we all awaken
To this reality
And set ourselves free.

©2025 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.