Meditations on Messiaen
Revelations
6
Change
The wind of change will blow and change will come,
heralded not by brazen trumpets and a roll of drums,
but overnight in stealth and silence. The valleys will lose
their coal. The seams will shrink, smaller and smaller,
until even the tiniest child will not find room the kneel
at the coal-face and sweat in adoration, shovel and pick
in hand, prying and praying in praise of the black god.
Change will come. The mines will be closed.
The miners will go on unemployment. They will move
to other areas, where mines still flourish, for a life time
spent underground is not that easy to forget and change
is never easy. Who ever said it would be easy?
The men in grey suits bring change. They walk and talk
and plan the changes they will bring about. The pit-head
baths will turn into super stores, a new trading estate will offer
work to the workless who will be changed into worthy workers
once again with course after course of education and retraining.
Yes, change will come. Some will pack up and leave,
only to return as they cannot face the face of change
as once they faced the coal-face, on their knees all day,
praying. Some will go overseas, by boat or plane.
They need never fear for Australia is near. America is a siren
singing bedrock songs of welcome and freedom. Canada calls
and many arrive there to face the white face of winter
rather than that merry, coke-black face of Old King Coal.
Yes, change will come. You will change. Your children
will be born into change and only your memories will recall
life before change, that life everlasting that came
before the fall of coal and your immortality is now
a Post-lapsarian call to constant change, secuale seculorum,
for ever and ever, until that final change. Amen.
Click on the link below for Roger’s reading.
rogermoorepoet 
Change is constant indeed
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We used to train our students for one career. Now it is life long learning so they may be prepared for whatever comes next on the conveyor belt of employment!
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So true, i’m in the later stages of my working career and just trying to keep up for me is tricky. But I was asking my some coworkers, in their later 20’s,, have they found email is becoming obsolete and do younger people still check it? One of the two raised an Eye brow and said that is a valid point, I haven’t considered. She went on to say, she thinks email is essential business communication and wouldn’t change, I said don’t be so surprised if you find something replaces it sooner than later. The next new thing is always coming at you and by thirty you feel left behind.
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Great point. First, I learned how to use WebCT. Then they changed it to Blackboard. Then along came Moodle. Meanwhile, how does one manage too keep up with one’s research and reading and publishing, while trying to (mis?)manage new platforms that emerge every this way and that! I remember when the landline, the part line, and the circular dial were in vogue! Now they are in dodoland.
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Ha ha ha ha….yup
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Old Loyalist Burial Ground, Fredericton
The signs can be easily missed: a half-covered entrance, a single handrail. Two hundred years ago, those who did not survive that terrible first winter were buried close at hand. Golden dandelions with royal ruffs cluster beside deep wheel ruts. Red-shouldered Blackbirds flit from branch to branch. Grosbeaks swarm like bees in black and yellow flocks. The river still flows fresh and high and fiddleheads thrust their creaking way through untidy debris. Inside the burial ground, two leaning stones, their inscriptions blurred like yesterday’s half-erased chalkboard, mock the well-mown lawn and latest monument. Mosquitoes whine and descend in squadrons. Leeches rise, draw blood and, gorged, subside. Late sunlight clots its spring song earthwards. Seeds thrust impatiently to leaf and flower: underground bustle of root and hustling worm.
I posted this poem on your Duel page.
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