Climate Change

The sky is orange out in Seattle;

In California it is red.

Louisiana's buildings rattle

With hurricane-force winds instead.

In Iowa the corn lies down

From the derecho that passed by

While Texan -outs, both black- and brown-,

Mean thousands freeze and hundreds die.

The Colorado River's gone

And with it water for the west;

The polar vortex seems to spawn

Much further south each year. The rest

Of US history will be

The coming rising of the sea.

Legalese

How terrible it is to make the rules

When no one cares about the legislation;

It makes the legislators feel like fools

And often bubbles into indignation.

The net result can be stultification

As rules unchanged will harden and grow brittle;

They sometimes need a massive perturbation

To help improve them even just a little.

And yet instead the legislators whittle

Shaving only small parts from the side

They argue over every jot and tittle

While letting larger problems sleep and slide.

If we and they cared more perhaps they might

Care more about if law is always right.

Plaisance

It's pleasant, I imagine, to be known,

To have your needs acknowledged, to be seen;

To sprout the seeds in others you have sown

With careful tending as they grow up green.

It must be nice to be surrounded by

A coterie of people you know well

Who hear the silence, and can read your eye

Without the need to speak or calmly tell

The troubles that have told on you; to know

That those around you care for who you are

As well as what you do. It has to grow

Increasingly delightful. And so far

In my experience, it has so proved:

When I am known, I am forever moved.

Predestined Evangelism

Grace, they say to me, is freely given;

A holy gift unearned and so unending;

It heals a world that we all know needs mending

And seals the cracks with which all life is riven.

It is the blessing of an unasked heaven

The joyful news that God himself is sending;

A free-grown grant, no merely mortal lending:

To human souls the necessary leaven.

Yet I am lectured to be born again;

Informed, unless I do just as I'm told

This blessed gift will not be mine to hold

As thus conditioned by the minds of men.

Therefore I have to ask: who gets to choose?

And have you really heard your own Good News?

On the Successive Deaths of David Bevington and Michael Murrin

There are some giants who remain in place

So long they are misregistered as mountains:

A cave reported where there is a face;

Their sleeping drool unrecognized makes fountains.

These massive beings cast their shadows deep;

So deep whole towns are built within their shade

Where people in the darkness softly creep

As if the sun itself would die and fade.

So great can be their impact on the land

That every map will note them and new roads

Skirt by their legs as if divine command

Instructed them to lessen their great loads.

And when they leave, the people who built there

Are left bereft, as lost as anywhere.