Whether

Whether

I try to keep up with the flow of these things,
the flow of the weather and news,
whether it's raining or whether it snows,
the wars that are raging, a song Dylan sings,
whether he's folking or whether it's blues,
divining the things that he knows.

As decades pass by it's increasingly hard
to remember events gone before;
the wars that were raging, the deaths that occurred,
who played which hand, concealing a card
to give them advantage, to propagate war
when the arms dealers signalled the word. 

I might be forgiven for memory lapses,
how some of it's there but not all.
The constant bombardment of most of the senses,
electrical fizzing inside the synapses,
reduces the deftness of instant recall,
destroying my fragile defences.

But whether I can or whether I can't
is irrelevant really, I know.
Bad things happen to people, to others, not so.
So, whether I pull up or whether I plant
the flowers that peep through the crust of the snow,
disasters will come - and will go.