Awakening II: The Poetry of Gunnar Våken

Poem: Choose the Good

Born amid extremes
Created by someone else's dream
Nevertheless autonomy
Is built into
Your rhyming scheme

One hero born and named after
A pirated Hebrew deity
The other more than a decade later
Carries the title of
A Viking fantasy

Both are products of my
Youthful drives and ideals
And shaped by their mothers
And a bit of me behind
The wheel

We are spun out from the explosion
Of our parents' life choices
Though before in the pre-born etherworld
We are offered no vote
No voices

We are raised for twenty years
Like corn in a valley field
With no guarantee
What the crop will yield

I am hopeful
As I bumble along
Trying to do my daddy job
With awkward or chaotic partnerships
That the end result is
Ripe and ready corn on the
Cob

Mothers and teachers
Buddies and gaming preachers
GFs and circumstances
Both healthy and forlorn romances
All shape the clay
Year by year, day by day

What limited wisdom I can offer
What puny tidbits
I can proffer
I hold put to you
Like a shaking olive branch
Like a turd from the livestock
On a farmer's ranch

This instant, as the sun breaks out
From apocalyptic skies
I whisper to you, my sons:
"Choose the good
And never ever
Say die"

~ Gunnar Våken