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.

Predictable Forms

Recently I was thinking about romance novels (which I am an avid consumer of) and fanfiction (which I both read and write) in connection to a topic that is also applicable to poetry, particularly the sonnet: the joys of predictability.

In romance novels, there are known beats in the story that the audience can predict. In fanfiction, the characters and often the events as well are drawn exactly from an existing canon that the audience is explicitly familiar with. In each case, the pleasure and joy of the consumption comes not from surprise and unpredictability but from finding out exactly how known factors will develop and reveal themselves. The journey, not the destination, is the point. 

The same, it seems to me, is true of the sonnet. Fourteen lines; a rhyme scheme and meter that reveal themselves early; predictable points for a turn or two. None of them are the point; they are the medium for the point. The predictable elements allow the rest of the expression to be the focus. 

A lot of modern poetry relies on invented, even nonce forms, unpredictable or at least unconstrained. There is obviously space for this just as there is space for original (not fan) works, and for literary (non-genre, non-romance) novels. But there is also ample space for sonnets and other formal, predictable forms, just as there is for fanfiction and romance. And this is true even though there have been millions of sonnets written and similar quantities of fanfic and romance. Precisely because the journey is the point, we can travel the same paths endlessly, within the same constraints. And it will be different every time.

Religious Extremes

This is not a Christian nation, not

A country born from your theology;

The key idea I see you have forgot

Is that in this land all of us are free:

Free not to worship as you choose, but to

Consider what we do ourselves think right;

To pray to your God or if we want, not, too,

Without your interfering oversight.

And if we have (have always) fallen short

Of that ideal, and lessened freedom's range,

That does not mean that you get to abort

The thought itself, or make the ideal change:

It means we have some work to do. Our nation

Is larger than your cramped imagination.

Sorrow

Occasionally, I'm struck by waves of grief

That roll across me like an open sea

Until they break like riptides on a reef

And leave me longing for what used to be.

Sometimes I curse my own inconstancy

That lets me for a moment cease my grieving, 

Which should, it seems, seize me eternally

Beyond the bounds of being or believing.

But then I recognize that such a heaving

Is unsustainable; I cannot weep

Forever. It is not my sorrow leaving

That helps me to recover, and to keep

A happy face more often, but this balm:

The sea will also sometimes see a calm.

Public

I love a city built without a car.

The way the streets meander to and fro,

The sidewalks made for people to walk far,

The distances made shorter by the flow

Of human need, which places near each spot

The real demands of our necessity:

A place to eat, a place to sit in thought,

A place to buy, to entertain, to be.

A city built along an older plan

Assuming you will need to walk or ride

Is more responsive than a carport can

Or even will be. When I am inside

A city built for us, I find my feet

Are dancing as I wander down each street.

exhaustion

My weary self is tired to the bone

And yet I soldier on because of you.

Not that you make me work; that is my own

Decisive choice. I do what I would do.

But rather having you around me makes

The world a place that I can still exist.

To be around you even tired takes

Less energy; your presence will assist

Whatever it may be I do or try,

Not by intention or directed action

(Though sometimes those as well), but simply by

The way your presence slows the deep extraction

Of me from me, and makes the tired day

An open one through which to make my way.