Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, where have you been, my darling young one?
I’ve stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains,
I’ve walked and I’ve crawled on six crooked highways,
I’ve stepped in the middle of seven sad forests,
I’ve been out in front of a dozen dead oceans,
I’ve been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard,
And it’s a hard, and it’s a hard, it’s a hard, and it’s a hard,
And it’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall…–Bob Dylan, A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall
Our hour during 1960’s
when Prez resigns because
of Vietnam War protests
those of us in San Francisco
fueled Summer of Love
seem sure that all such doors
include Jim Morrison’s
were opening on a brighter
future which turned out
to be this window slightly
ajar soon closed, broke
my rose-colored glasses…
And then when cohort
had families, we assumed
When I’m Sixty-Four
Change threat will
reign down on grand/kids
truly meant if for strange
reason do age, live as
one in Yellow Submarine.
Approaching 80 years
now, however, it appears
to Gerardo geriatric
commune pie-in-sky ain’t
gonna happen plus add
insult to injury, MAGA is
no less existential
anthropomorphic climate*
*Trump Administration Live Updates: Planned Order Aims to Bolster Coal https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/04/08/us/trump-news-tariffs
Gerard Sarnat
Late-phase often graphic poet arrived in seventh decade, aphorist, humorist or sometimes meanderist; Gerard Sarnat’s a multiple Pushcart/Best of Net Award nominee. His work’s been widely published; including four collections; by Rattle, London Arts-Based Research Centre, Israel Association of Writers in English, The Nature of Our Times/Poets For Science, Gravity of the Thing, Brooklyn Review, Tokyo Poetry Journal, Gargoyle, New Delta Review, Buddhist Review, New York Times, Oberlin, St. John’s University, Northwestern, Yale, Pomona, Harvard, Missouri Baptist, Stanford, Dartmouth, Penn, Columbia, Grinnell, Johns Hopkins, NYU, Brown, North Dakota, McMaster, Maine, British Columbia/Toronto/Chicago, Virginia and Alabama university presses. He’s a Harvard Medical School-trained physician, Stanford professor, healthcare CEO. Currently, he’s devoting energy and resources to dealing with climate justice, serving on Climate Action Now’s board. Sarnat’s belonged to the longest-running U.S. Jewish-Palestinian Dialogue Group. Gerry’s been married since 1969 and has three kids, six grandsons — and looks forward to future granddaughters.