Democracy Dies in Silence

 

When push comes to shove, what will you choose

as you watch what is happening–don’t you care what we loose?

Content just to drift in a fog of complacency, 

won’t you stand up and fight for beloved democracy?

For the home of the brave and the land of the free?

Ceding and bleeding, with each day receding

into the hands of the oligarchy

who want to dismantle all that we’ve done;

stripping away all that we’ve earned

burning our rights...watch them burn, watch them burn.

In silence, too many hope for the best

believing perhaps this is only a test.

Make no mistake, this is a regime:

picking their targets undoing the seams

of the fabric that holds “We the people’” together.

No one said it would be easy to weather the storm.

to keep safe from those with intent to do  harm

What can we do with such limited choices?

Perhaps use our words, perhaps share our voices.

Perhaps do our best to protest the insanity,

while we still can speak out against targeted tyranny

and those unelected who shape all we do...

There are no real heroes,

  just me and just you.

© G.B 2025

To the Moon!!

 

And it's official! At 2:34 a.m. today, March 2^nd,  2025, Firefly’s Blue Ghost Serenity Mission landed safely on the moon, and attached to the lander are archived works from The Lunar Codex, which I am so very proud to be a part of!

 

The Lunar Codex is the brainchild of Dr. Samuel Peralta, an artist, a writer, a poet, a musician, and yes, an actual physicist, who had the vision to preserve and archive the works of artists, poets, musicians, and filmmakers from around the world. It contains 250,000 cultural artifacts from over 45,000 artists, writers, musicians and filmmakers representing 262 countries & territories and 149 indigenous nations, launched in over 7 missions from Earth to space, the moon, and beyond!

 

The Lunar Codex uses digital and analog technology to preserve on nickel based NanoFiche, an archival medium that is expected to last hundreds of thousands of years, if not more. The advantage of using digital technology is its ability to record enormous amounts of data with a very small weight profile. They are stored in the LifeShip Pyramid that is part of the LifeShip payload, physically attached to the lander. The lander becomes a marker for the location of each Lunar Codex collection.

I am proud and humbled to share that The d’Verse Anthology: Voices of Contemporary World Poetry, Edited by Frank Watson and published in 2013, was on the Serenity Mission. I congratulate my fellow d’Verse poets. Who knew when we shared our voices for this book that we would be a part of something so much larger?!!

Much gratitude to Samuel Peralta, my fellow poet and a mentor at d’Verse, for working diligently to make The Lunar Codex, his vision and dream, a reality!

An Obstinate Lot

 

I come from an area of proud tradition

filled with people as tough and as strong

as the seasons that rule it—

Farmers who toiled the rock strewn fields

turning soil to grow their food

learning to make do; to build stone walls

with the rocks they turned each spring.

We forged the rivers, sending lumber

from the northlands to the mills 

 and factories in the south.

We built bridges. 

We built the first navigable canal.

We stood our ground against tyrants and kings.

The "shot heard round the world?"

That was us!
We know that democracy is right,

that oligarchy can never be our course.
We gave birth to founding fathers

and Presidents: John Hancock,

 John Adams, John Quincy Adams

Calvin Coolidge, Franklin Pierce, 

and John F. Kennedy were born here.

Our heroes did not wear capes.

They stood their ground against tyranny.

Ethan Allen, Deborah Sampson, Paul Revere,

just some of the names from our past.

Ordinary people placed in extraordinary circumstances

carving their place in our country’s proud history.
People like Joshua Chamberlain of Maine

who, at 34,  despite  the odds,

led his troops to victory in the battle

of Little Round Top at Gettysburg.

When the going gets tough, the tough get going.

Today I've chosen remind you of just who we are—
We are a tough and obstinate lot, we New Englanders.
We are not afraid to ruffle feathers and go against the grain.

We don’t hold to lies nor cruelty; we grew up around cows

and can smell the bullshit long before we see the bull.
Our countenance is as tough as the hills, the valleys

and the rocky shorelines that we come from.

Our humor is as dry as our August summers.

We stay here not because of the frozen winters

the muddy Springs, the heat of our summers, 

nor even the brief reprieve of autumn.

We stay because we are as a surly lot

as surely a part of this place

as it is a part of us...

and we are family, and like family

we may argue amongst ourselves

but, God forbid, you go after any one of us,

then you face the wrath of all!

Never forget who you are 

Never forget the ones who forged the path you walk.

 

© Ginny Brannan 2025

Image: Early view of Bellows Falls, VT borrowed from Bellows Falls Historical Society page.

 

 

Intervention

 

They say it “wasn’t sustainable”

the years of growth and community

of peace, and sensibility.

That our differences are “too widespread,”

our beliefs are "too far apart."

And so they came, trading decency for hard-line tactics

erasing truth with false statistics.

They say that we need to “buck up”

we’ve gotten “too soft”

as they gaslight,  rewrite history,

releasing those who broke the law

with no thought to what they’re breaking.

Money can’t buy everything.

While it bought the presidency 

and much of his immediate constituency.

with the promise of “legal” tax evasion,

it’s showcased our fragility.

Feeling lost, without direction.

we can’t give up and can’t give in—

We are the candles in the dark

the truth that cannot be erased.

The darkness holds a million stars

and we, the carriers of the light

must stand firm against the night.

 

© G.B. 2025

Credit for Image: https://starwalk.space/en/news/why-is-the-sky-dark-at-night

Procrastination!

 

Oh look! A dusting of soft snow!

It falls so gently on the lawn.

I watch the flakes as they alight

to paint the boughs in pristine white.

 

It fills these eyes with such delight!

It purifies the grit and grime;

and brings me back to childhood days

transforms me to a different time.

 

Now old bones ache with winter chill–

Oh, to be that child still!

Those winter days that I recall,

no worries should I slip and fall.

 

I watch here from my warm cocoon

through the frosted window pane

and contemplate if I should wait

to see if snow will turn to rain.

 

© Ginny Brannan 2025

Ode to the Days of Wonder!

 

Dawn breaks, I awaken to find

that overnight new snow has fallen,

coating lawn and trees alike.

It softens harsh lines and, to our delight,

brightens the monotone landscape

with untainted softness and purity.

Even the gray hills, once indistinguishable 

from the clouds above, have donned caps of winter white.

As children, we relished the new-fallen snow

Bundled in warm jackets and snow pants

boots, hats, scarves and mittens, barely able to move,

we would pull our sleds from storage sheds

heading for the nearest hill, cocoa and cookies

awaiting our return. Years pass, and time takes it’s toll.

We no longer see snow as a welcome reprieve

but more of a chore, an obstacle to get past

I miss the days of mittens drying by the heat, 

of rosy cheeks, of less worry and no hurry.

In every adult fraught with concern and responsibility

 lives an inner child yearning to be free.

 

 

© Ginny Brannan 2025

Image One: Three Children Sledding by Vickie Wade, full credit to the artist

Image Two: Photo of author and friends, circa early 1960's

A Crack in Everything

 

I hold my breath and wait for change

but nothing is forthcoming yet...

all those days and yesteryears

all the things that brought us here,

all that warmth has disappeared.

and I‘m left holding empty dreams.

Perhaps its age that makes it so–

the distant sounds of a life once full,

of home, of family being built...

I’ve watched it all come pouring down

 like rain upon the windowsill.

Stuck inside a world of gray

all life’s color washed away...

this countenance that I display

hides a heart in disarray.

The dissonance between what’s real

and what I choose for you to see—

the remnants of my dignity

protected under lock and seal.

I seek the crack that holds the light

the answers to this inner plight...

as yet, have found no resolution

 for one so lost and disillusioned.

 

© Ginny Brannan 2025

 

“There is a crack, a crack in everything
 That's how the light gets in”

Leonard Cohen “Anthem