hero-royrogers - The Monday Morning Memo

Wizzo has shared this poem with you a few times before, I know.
I think he likes it because it reminds him of something he wrote
several years ago. He’s painfully proud of it, so he’s
using it in the preface to The Invisible Heroes:

“Heroes are dangerous things. Bigger than life, highly exaggerated and
always positioned in the most favorable light, a hero is a beautiful lie.

We have historic heroes, folk heroes and comic book heroes.
We have heroes in books and songs and movies and sport.
We have heroes of morality, leadership, kindness and excellence.
And nothing is so devastating to our sense of wellbeing as
a badly fallen hero. Yes, heroes are dangerous to have.

The only thing more dangerous is not to have them.

Heroes raise the bar we jump and hold high the standards we live by.
They are tattoos on our psyche, the embodiment of all we’re striving to be.

We create our heroes from our hopes and dreams.
And then they create us in their own image.”
– Roy H. Williams

“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.

Oh, what did you see, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what did you see, my darling young one?

I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it.
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it.
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin’.
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin’.
I saw a white ladder all covered with water.
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken.
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children.

And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you hear, my darling young one?

I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin’.
Heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world.
Heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin’.
Heard ten thousand whisperin’ and nobody listenin’.
Heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin’.
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter.
Heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley.

Oh, who did you meet, my blue-eyed son?
Who did you meet, my darling young one?

I met a young child beside a dead pony.
I met a white man who walked a black dog.
I met a young woman whose body was burning.
I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow.
I met one man who was wounded in love.
I met another man who was wounded with hatred.

Oh, what’ll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
Oh, what’ll you do now, my darling young one?

I’m a-goin’ back out ’fore the rain starts a-fallin’.
I’ll walk to the depths of the deepest black forest.
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty.
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters.
Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison.
Where the executioner’s face is always well hidden.
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten.
Where black is the color, where none is the number.
And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it.
Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’
But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’.

And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard,
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall”

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