The Best Part Of The Day Poem by S. R. Lavin

The best part of my day was fritted away
in the swamps of South Carolina –
I was vanquished by all my desires,
seeking to love what remains innocent,
wandering in familiar swampy bogs.

On the beach I fed the seagulls,
and they looked to me, these being like angels
I have spoken with.

I was alive in a time of great beauty,
I lived in a time of great injustice…
I was born into an identity
I did not comprehend, so
I chose to live on the battlefield
day and night, sorting out
wrong from right.

At last I conquered death and misery
in the burning bones of my deepest desires.

I drive all the way to Vermont, and there,
at Mount Tabor, when you’re on it,
you know man is a small creature
who kills his own kind.

I lived to see the dawning of a new age,
to see the very fabric of human thought and action
cast off what is dead and corrupt to become this.