Tie Dyed

Yesterday I had lunch with a friend and we looked back through the thickets of our memories and laughed at the children we were when we found our way out of the garden and had to 'grow up' and run the world as best we could.

There was so much that changed. We went from the "aw shucks" world of Mayberry and Beaver Cleaver (where the women had tiny waists and perfect hair) where nothing bad ever happened - not even cloudy skies - to the bloody fields of Watts and Vietnam. We marched in riots and learned the freedom songs we still sing.

Not all of us got to Woodstock - you can't say that. Some of us went through that revolution of sex and female power and black integration in small towns and colleges in upstate New York and sunny California and Fargo, North Dakota. We did not turn that farmer's field into a stew of love and pot and magic music, but the sounds of freedom resonated through a land scrambled and re-arranged in thought and deed.

Not all of us lived in communes or practiced free love, but in our hearts we wanted the freedom everyone was talking about. We wanted to sing the songs and have a hootenanny on the lawn. We wanted to change the world.

And we did - or at least we thought we made a difference, but the truth is change is the real constant in any epoch. I leave you with these thoughts and the wish that you have a good day and walk on the sunny side. Terry

Tie Dyed

I would love to go back
To the psychedelic days
When love was free
And the background was
Batik and paisley –
And all the hippies were
Beautiful.

I would love to go back
To the carefree hours
When music thrilled our souls
And it didn’t matter what
We packed, because
We simply always had
Enough.

I would love to go back
And see the colors of our minds
That made all things possible
No matter how hard
They looked to our parents
When we told them our tie dyed
Dreams.

I would like to go back
And see those friends we made
In a haze of fragrant smoke
While the sitars played
All the way across
The land of the brave and home
Of the free.

I would like to look back
And see that our world changed
Fast when we were young
And sent to war against our will,
And taught to kill
People we never even
Got to know.

I would like to look back
And know that we did
The best we could – in spite
Of a world set in stone.