For Jack Kennedy-'A Thousand Days' Poem by Michael Shutt

A Thousand Days:

Has it been
just fifty years
since you left?

Left us bereft?

I don't care
what people say-
Conspiracists will
always have their day.

What matters now
are all the words
and thoughts
you left to us today.

A Thousand Days.

History replays
in black/white footage,
Kinescope.

You're just
a movie memory-

But Jack,
in looking back
through fifty years
we hear your voice.

You message,
Vision,
still gives hope.

A Thousand Days.

That's all you had,
from Passing Torch,

Then you
were gone.

'Ask Not.'

Ask not what
our God has wrought.

It matters not
five decades since,
the circumstance
of your foul death.

It only matters,
JFK,
what you once said
one frigid day.

In this land
of hypocrites,

Who quote you-
but forget your words-

In this strife torn
Land of Bounty:

Ask not.

Instead,

Ask what you
can do.

Ask not
what your country
can do for you.

In asking this,
your countrymen
can look with hope-
past present haze-

And realize promise
of too short
Thousand Days.

November 22,2013