A School for Refugees from an Ancient Culture #WATWB October

Photo: SBS News Australia

Welcome to We Are the World Blogfest #WATWB for October.  Please visit other posts too, especially our generous co-hosts Shilpa Garg, Sylvia McGrath, Mary Giese,Guilie Castillo and Belinda Witzenhausen.

I was reluctant to post this story at first, as it contains religious and political themes.  We do not, in any way, wish to see Christians and Muslims as opposing each other. Nor to politicise the plight of refugees.  Even more deeply this is a humanitarian issue on schooling for refugees.  It is also about ancient cultures and their languages continuing to enhance other cultures.  That opportunity is worth celebrating.  Assyrians have been fleeing to new lands to start again.  One of those places is to a school in Sydney Australia.  Click here to read the SBS news coverage.

We traveled with our language and our culture,

To settle in a new land,

To add our voice among the many,

As we lend our hand.

As part of a body of a people

To make the peopled spectre grand.

We find a voice and a lesson

Within the school surrounds,

To celebrate our culture,

In a language that just resounds.

 

Simon C.J. Falk 27 October 2017

---

Would you like to join this #WATWB Blogfest?

Once again, here are the guidelines for #WATWB:

1. Keep your post to Below 500 words, as much as possible.

2. Link to a human news story on your blog, one that shows love, humanity, and brotherhood. Paste in an excerpt and tell us why it touched you. The Link is important, because it actually makes us look through news to find the positive ones to post.

3. No story is too big or small, as long as it Goes Beyond religion and politics, into the core of humanity.

4. Place the WE ARE THE WORLD badge or banner on your Post and your Sidebar. Some of you have already done so, this is just a gentle reminder for the others.

5. Help us spread the word on social media. Feel free to tweet, share using the #WATWB hastag to help us trend!

Tweets, Facebook shares, Pins, Instagram, G+ shares using the #WATWB hashtag through the month most welcome. We’ll try and follow and share all those who post on the #WATWB hashtag, and we encourage you to do the same.Have your followers click Here to enter their link and join us! Bigger the #WATWB group each month, more the joy!

Advertisement

Moving Among Mixed Metaphors

Moving Among Mixed Metaphors

 

He sauntered in like

An unmade bed,

All bent and

Bedraggled about the shoulders and

Neck leaned over.

His days

All yellowed and dog-eared

Like a long loved –

Or unloved –

Book,

Spent,

And rent

In its spine

From the strain

Of bearing the pain.

His musing,

Among the mixed metaphors,

A metaphor itself,

Of days dotted

With random unconnected

Debris.

The remaining pages,

expectant

with the longing

to be

free.

 

Simon C.J. Falk 25 October 2017.

 

---

#WATWB October coming soon. Stay tuned.

It’ll Cut For Hay

Some people may have noticed that I write Christmas poems around that time of the year. One morning, when I was thinking about such things, this poem appeared.

It’ll Cut for Hay

 

A farmer pointed to his neighbour’s crop,

Said, “Mate, your crop will wilt way!”

The neighbour said,” Oh well, mate.”

“It’ll cut for hay.”

 

When the stripping came around,

And the header has its day,

They heard the threshing on the ground,

As it was cut for hay.

 

They bailed, and trucked and stowed it,

In the shed over by the way,

After bailing was all done,

The last bit was left for another day.

 

They left that bit in the corner,

Loose on the hay shed floor,

For a time of use later on,

Who would know what’s in store?

 

When as it might just happen,

The farmer of pessimistic bent,

After his wife died in tragedy,

His care for all was spent.

 

He hit the bottle hard,

And as the anger heaved inside,

He’d take it out upon his son,

And bash and flog his hide.

 

One day in a stupor,

As he reeled upon his feet,

The young bloke pushed him backwards,

And took off down the street.

 

The young bloke ran along the lane way,

He trudged across paddock and up road,

Finally after much moving,

He had to rest his load.

 

He staggered into their neighbour’s hay shed,

And in the corner by the way,

He spotted the bailing leftovers,

And then crashed in the hay.

 

Christmas Eve, it was, that night,

That he fled his Dad’s abode,

Searching for a place to rest,

He’d taken to the road.

 

It was reminiscent of another night,

On another day and station,

When a family travelling to Bethlehem,

Needed accommodation.

 

When morning came, the farmer went,

Out to the hay shed,

Surprise met him on the threshold,

With the neighbour’s son in bed.

 

He later told his preacher,

Who thought the story had deeper reach,

This plight reminded him of the first Christmas,

So, on it he did preach.

 

The boy’s father just got worse,

And ended up doing time,

In a drunken rage he robbed and assaulted,

And was caught red handed in the crime.

 

But his son looked after his father’s flock,

And worked on the neighbour’s land,

He took the wilted, bailed hay,

And fed the sheep by hand.

 

Then gathered with his ‘foster dad’,

They gave thanks for the wilted hay,

It had served a purpose,

On the needed day.

 

There is more story to be told,

As the prison door swung open wide,

The son and father ran to embrace,

And now work side by side.

 

Our life’s triumphs and failures,

Might grow or wilt like hay,

But even chaff has its day in the sun.

On that needed day.

True life will find a way.

 

 

Simon C.J. Falk 25 September 2017

Check out some of the great blogfests like Cherished 2017 #CBF17 or We Are The World #WATWB