Evidential Shells

 Strolling along the strands of time

we find pieces in the sand,

remnants of creatures’ 

life gone by.

Let us collect a few pieces . . .

Oh, what have we here?

Let’s take look.

We plop down in the sand

and begin arranging shells.

. . .don’t know why, I just . . .

have some notion of Cambrian past

or the Genesis moment

Spirit of God hovering over

the surface of the waters

eons ago.

There’s a pattern somewhere

in these random shards

of sea creatures’ cranked-up

now cracked-up

abandoned huts,

and here’s a man, wanting to find a story

a history, a timeline,

reason or rhyme

some explanation

written into the remains.

some meaning 

in the random remnants?

A closer look reveals

two types.

Now arrange a bunch in

pattern, improvised

maybe random

maybe not 

just to make some

comparison 

maybe discern some

development pattern 

or even divine imprint

now arrange them on sand

to make some unique surfus opus,

a work of beachified shard art!

Hey notice

most of these little clammies

had cast out concentric rings

in their gradual growth . . .

rings that span wider and wider

as the creature’s expanding abode grew 

broader, elliptical . . .  in a widening gyre

further and further flat out

from the  brain

or whatever that  organizing organ

is in a mollusk mind.

Others fling up calcified arcs

like dead rainbows.

See the roundy one at the bottom.

But then,

alas, and pshaw!

as Moody Blues sang

many moody moons ago . . .

“ the tide rushes in

and washes my castles away

and I’m really not so sure

which side of the . . .”

 

Glass half-Full

the Dixie Death

By ’n by, way down South

that sleepy ole antebellum way

of honky life got laid low—

had to kowtow to a new master

whose color was darker

with features more Africana.

A newfound integrity

has ultimately laid low

the ole mint julep on the front porch days

of white

privilege

 cuz the good ole boys

and gals got laid on them

by the sands of time

a rectified blend of African charm

and a revolutionary new testament of grace.

But the racist honkies

took a long damn time to 

figure that part out.

So they were in for a long hard

lesson, but

they didn’t know it yet.

Black folks knew the lesson would be 

hard

‘cuz they’d been livin’ it for over 400

years

though it took them a while to figure out 

just how stubborn and contrary the whites

could be

when they got that deer-in-the-lights look

in their eyes.

Things got serious

after Brother Medgar was assassinated

in his own front yard

after speakin at the New Jerusalem

Church

And then

the ancient soulful cry of Rachel

weeping for her children was heard

all along the magnolia boulevards

and carefully-tended camellia pathways of white

privilege . . .

here, there and yonder

throughout the black community

and beyond.

Brother Medgar had caught a glimpse

of the Promised Land,

but he never got there

like Brother Martin never got there.

Nevertheless

there was a burning bush down south

h’yeah

where they lived and breathed

and had their being

and worked tirelessly among their people.

Sister Anne, during her last week

at Tougaloo College 

accompanied a small group

of intrepid black folk to order luncheon

at a downtown dime-store lunch counter,

following the example of them bruthas

in Greensboro 

a few years earlier.

Brother Medgar’s call,

Brother Martin’s call

for voter registration

and just plain-ole freedom

and dignity and justice

was ringin’ out!

It reverberated

from the red clay hills of Georgia

among the magnolias and

carefully-tended camellias

of the Deep South,

formerly thought to be the Solid

South

before it got fracked with a fresh

delirium tremens of

falling-apart white

privilege

and got run outa town

by the great grandsons and daughter

of former slaves.

 

As the dews of Dixie used to drop on us

so are the pages of  that history long-gone

droppin’ down on us 

as a decadent dust 

cast on us:

Ole mint julep on the front porch white

privilege been sho’nuff proven wrong,

laid down low

in the dust heap of history

 

Yessir, that Ole South system is now long gone;

but for it I wouldn’t give you a damn dime

‘cause the weight of that abuse could not go on 

as it broke the back of American liberty

liberty just tryin’

tryin’ to be free!

 

The weight of our abuse came all tumblin’ down on us

with Rosa’s resolve—her courageous dignity.

She refused  to go to the back of the bus,

and so sparked the long-slow death

of segregation integration

in this nation

land of the free

home of the brave:

Brave Rosa!

Rosa’s refusal changed the course history.

But in some ways

we still be traipsin’ along

on that Edmund Pettis bridge

with Abraham, Martin, and John Lewis

Anybody here

seen the long hard-won legacy of Sister Rosa?

Anybody here

heard the death cry of Brutha George?

 

Glass half-Full and King of Soul 

The Swan Song of Arnold Yates

 The world is mad tonight.

Unresting souls feed-bleed into

the turbid ebb and flow of online ire.

Yearning and burning in the worldweb gyre

the world is radical tonight.

Reason’s been flung apart; the Net cannot be told

what to do.

The sender cannot comprehend

the far-flung manipulation of what he sends.

A data-driven tide is loosed into the swirl

where hackers whack our data-driven world

everywhere

the ceremony of benevolence is drowned

in the turbid ebb and flow

of human usury.

Clueless proles lack all comprehension, while wizards twirl

their trolled-up swirls

into cookie-coded streams

that nullify our naive dreams

and herd us, the cattle-driven teams

in programmed herds of Left and Right

as online armies clash by night.

The world is mad tonight.

 

Glass half-Full

Ambiguity in Polarity

I hear America fading:

it’s like . . .

like a lotta young people are trying to say,

you know?. . .

they’re like, and the talking tubeheads mutter it too.

I mean

even educated,  expert voices . . . they’re,

like trying to utter,

something.

I mean, they kinda know what . . .

like, what it’s really like.

And they sort of feel it in their bones what

needs to be done, you know . . . and like

anyway,   they’re dulling . . their

. . .um, like, what they're trying to say and

express, like . . . what's  important to them.

You know what I mean?

But what its really like-- as if they kind of know what

they want to say. Anyway,

I’m not really sure about this because 

we do, like, live in an age 

of fuzzy ambiguity where you can’t . . .

you can’t, like, really be sure . . . or,

appear to be sure about anything, cuz

. . . the truth . . . if

there is, like,  such a thing

as truth, its . . . well, you know . . .

and I can submit my, um, my statement here

with that . . . sort of cool . . . 

like, obligatory temerity 

because, you know, the left is so

um, so insistent about their program 

and their agenda— whatever needs to be. . .

like, done.

Whatever you wanna call that, 

but the right is so

like, stubborn and set in their ways

because they, like, they think they’ve

been running the show for,

you know, for so long

that they think they own the place.

So, yeah, I would say that, um,

yes it could happen here

but on the other hand

let’s hope not.

But hey! On the other hand we hear 

Kshama in Seattle

defending their CHOPchaz neighborhood.

She speaks with absolute clarity.

One can sense the conviction in her voice:

Let communities make their own choice! 

Let neighbors congregate to police

themselves.

In the Councilwoman we hear clearly

what they’re calling for:

to be left alone

on their own.  

We detect no waffling obfuscation

from Kshama— no ambivalent um-umming.

 

But now we do hear a distant, dreadful drumming,

from the other coast of this, our vast continent:

it’s potus promoting his own estrangement: 

The Fearful—in—Chief 

is threatening to drum up more grief

with teargas troops--their  ordnance to shoot 

and they’re packin’ rubber bullets to boot.

There’s a man with a gun over there

telling us we got to beware.

Now I don’t know, but if I may prevent a rumble:

I feel our ole American civility is starting to crumble.

This currently charged-up polarity

so brutally hypes-up our barbarity!

But listen . . .

Friends, Americans, Country(wo)men

Surely now is the time to renew our goodwillity—  

and restore our domestic tranquility.

Hey! Good luck with that! 

 

Glass half-Full

COvidConfusionCantioAudio

Yesterday's stubborn poem about a stubborn disease has now been rendered to audio version:

COvidConfusioCantioAudio

Glass half-Full

COvid Confusion

COVID conveys
Confusion, by intrusion,
Contending against our
Contemporary illusions. This damned
Corona thing prevents people from
Congregating, cuz social distancing
Cockamamie
Constricts us to
Collaborating in
Convoluted ways. So we must let ourselves
Commiserate over the loss of
Conventional
Collaboration. But hey!
Coincidentally, we can
Conclude:
Connecting online
Can take the place of the old face-to-face
Conversing like we used to do before this
Cockamamie commotion
Came along, to
Collide with our former
Conductions of
Community-oriented
Cooperation. But this
Collapse of our real
Convening capabilities
Compels us to somehow find new solutions to old
Conundrums. I know this seems a little
Convoluted, but maybe we
Could please try a little harder to
Coordinate our
Collective tactics for the
Continuation of life under these
Confounded
Conflummucks! these
Constrictive
Conditions! Dam! hey we’ll just have to
Conjure up some
Confidence in our public health officials who
Could contrive some strategy and
Concoct some solutions, hopefully better than
Chloroquine, cuz too much of this
Cockamamie
Cwuarantine
Confinement gets them
Contrarian
Confederates all
Conflagrated and
Coiled up like friggin'
Cobras with a
Conniption fit, like, like
Contending, like:

Could we please get this
Cockamamie Covid Contusion
Concluded?! like the
Ckid in the
Car-seat who
Cried out about
COVID Conclusion:
Are we there yet?
but hey I say
Nolo Contendera with
CDC's strategy of
COvid agendera. Just please
Conclude. You
Copy that? If not,
Elude!

Glass half-Full

I hear America flinging

I hear America flinging
challenges of COVID dare;



I see America stringing up a net of Covid care.
I feel America wailing, with going-viral fear:
Pleas from nurses, sending out the call for protective gear,
Journalists following every viral report they hear
Doctors attacking the dreaded virus’ lethal spread
Families mourning for—and remembering— their dead
Health Officials call forth our care-giver legions
Media transmit the message to far/near regions
Friends fling phoning nets of loving, living care
Brave RNs march into the battle as they dare
Administrators send out urgent staffing calls
  flinging open clinic doors in crowded hospital halls
Governors rush out urgent calls for public health protection
Reporters fuel the urgency of that damned fast-spread infection
Every citizen who inhabits regions far and near
   gets affected with this dreadful viral fear.
As pleadings sound forth to maintain some social distance,
you could save a life—maybe your own!—in every social instance.
Hey you! Ask not what the world can do for you, in this anti-covid call;
Ask what, together, we can do for protection of us all.

(with appreciation for inspiration from Walt Whitman and John Fitzgerald Kennedy)
Glass half-Full

Queen Corona

Hey! Who knew?
Somebody somewhere
must have been dreaming
this one up
for next blockbuster
disaster flick
while we were looking the other way
searching for needle in a haystack
next thing you know
we’re  caught in the middle
of hundred year flood
so to speak
though it started as a trickle,
but suddenly swirling whirling
wuhan never saw it hurling
its way through hubei
exotic epidemic
starting, like, quite anemic
but before you know it
mutating to pandemic
mutilating expectations
it was one in a million
i’m tellin’ ya!
straw that broke camel’s back
the damn thing—
a wild card
that brought down our worldwide
house of cards
flinging shards of dollar hordes—
so steadily deadly
everywhere it went
strickening  our system’s
wheelin’ dealin’
achilles heel
nobody saw it coming


black swan swimming
in the dead of night
just aint right
left without a clue
who knew?
the next big thing
going viral
would be some very vague
plague
nobody ever heard of
who’d’ve thought it
the queen of quite a
lot of unlikely
events
crown it queen
of destruction:
coronavirus.
Even with 2020 vision we never saw it coming.
Blindsided we were.
Actually,
I noticed one person did
see it coming: Chris Martenson.
But don’t blame the messenger.
Don’t blame anybody. Just
Do unto others
as you would have them
do unto you.
Selah.

Glass half-Full

And that's the way it is . . .

The editor said if it bleeds,

it leads . . .

talkin’ bout them newsworthy stories

when journalists  were in their glory,

back in the day

before this present cranked-up fray.

Oh, but

that newsworthy rule was back in the former times,

when readers paid in nickels and dimes;

reporters had a pencil tucked o’er their ear,

and readers held our heritage dear.

Nowadays, if it provokes,

it’ll stoke

the facebook fire

and whip up tweeter ire,

as our frantically repulsing extremities

drum up crank polarities.

I hate to break it to ya

but here’s our newsworthy brouhaha:

The user who insults

gets results.

Read ‘em and weep

I said;

watch a talking video creep

instead.

Now fake news and hyped-up spin

constitute our gravest social media sin.

Meanwhile . . .

and I do mean mean,

Journalism gets lowered to the grave,

final resting place of the brave.

In this land of the free,

internet froth is mainly

what we see . . .

in this republic, if we can keep it,

'though as we sow

we'll surely reap it.

And that’s the way it is

in  21st-century democracy shobiz. . .

(as Cronkite might have said

if Uncle Walter were not dead.)

Glass half-Full

Carbon and Silicon

Someone said that carbon gives life,

while silicon gives sand.

But now there’s buzz about carbon causing strife,

while silicon wields a magic hand.

The someone was referring to element six on the periodic table,

because carbon provides for life a grab-bar that’s organic,

while silicon fourteen, just below it, is merely able

to direct our circuits like a transistorized mechanic.

Now we should notice, or so I’m told . . .

carbon seems to be forsaking its own self-styled mission;

it has grown quite uppity and bold—

whereas silicon swirls predictably in wave-like submission.

Maybe we should put our silicon bots to work

to affix restraints on the unsheathed carbon beast,

so the little busybody, carbon number six—that jerk!

can’t grab control and crash our worldwide feast.

Glass half-Full

Rain, Flame, Eternal Name

Tonight,

The springs of eternity

cast their  perfect pearls of rain

upon our windowpane.

Outside,

blackness of the night

casts dim soundings of our worldly plight

splashing faint toccatas

of lonesome drip-drop, drip-drop sonatas

Oh, this just seems like the end of the world,

as I hear rain against our window hurled.

Or . . .

the beginning of something grand

with baptismal sprinklings from some angel’s hands.

Whichever one it is

is up to us to decide.

There is, you know,

deep within our breast

of pilgrim restlessness

a hope—

a desperate pattering of some purpose, 

dropping in this midnight rain

dripping with our blood-borne pain;

It persists in thumpish pattering,

oh, such a dreary smattering,

that falls gently in plip-plopping drops

to bring the harvest of our hoped-for crops—

our dreams, my schemes,

here In this autumn’s irrigated ending.

So far we’ve come from summer’s fair beginning.

Now in this darkness of October night

by solitary glow of  low lamp light

wired in by human ingenuity

enabled by divine gratuity,

behold  this lamp-fire that burneth not;

it merely glows in element, slightly hot.

Oh! but here’s the wonder of my soul!

If I may be so bold—

as to compare this glow, so tame

with eternal Yahweh flame.

I see it burns for me the same

as for our long-gone brother

who beheld  some earlier other—

in a bush it brightly flamed

to reveal the ancient I Am name.

Yes, I see it  shining  brightly

On the table here next to me.

What a wonder to behold!

A phenomenon so very old.

Whether by electricity or flame;

all is powered by Eternal name,

YWHW I AM and I AM again,

always will be,

I can clearly see.

Now you may say that glow came with Edison,

True, but it did originate  with  Eternal One

who set us spinning ‘round the sun,

after His Big Bang  fun.

Tonight,

The springs of eternity

cast their  perfect pearls of rain

upon our windowpane,

and I’m aware of Yahweh name;

it glints into our human game

again and again and again.

From time to time

we see it shine.

Ah ha!

Selah.

King of Soul

Getting old

Are you booting up a brave new world

or slogging in a new slave world?

You who would be brave or slave—

snickery snob or clueless knave?

Catching the new wave

or just trying to behave?

You filling your Capitalist bag,

or flying the Socialist flag?

Working for wages, or plotting for profits?

You dumbing down, or heeding the prophets?

Will you work as selective

or labor in a collective?

With more .gov or less?

destined for worst or best.

You protesting in public space,

or praying in private grace?

All things being equal,

are you satisfied or freakful?

Living as privileged  elite

or just dancing to the rabble beat?

Striving for the common or the proprietary?

will you eat fattening or dietary?

Or maybe you be in shadowland like me

wishing for what was instead of what will be.

Winds of change blow hot and cold;

Will you stay young, or like me, grow old?

Winds of change blow foul and fair;

Are you ready to turn to dust or air?

Winds of change are hard to read;

Can you face them without a creed?

Day of death casts us in the hole;

Will you fall to dust, or rise in soul?

Smoke

Let us do it

Let us make love.

Let us make children.

Let us feed our children.

Let us do work to support them.

Let us teach them.

Let us make places where children can romp on grass.

Let them run and jump and romp and stomp.

Let them build treehouses.

Let them grow.

Let them learn.

Let us learn.

Let us try.

Let us fail. Let us repair and recover.

Let us do. 

Let us do what is right.

Let us make stuff.

Let us make goods.

Let us craft.

Let us think.

Let us prosper.

Let us profit.

Let us do business.

Let us excel. Let us hope.

Let us cope.

Let us worship God.

Let us take care for one another.

Let us give.

Let us breathe.

Let us laugh.

Let us sing.

Let us speak.

Let us preach, teach, and reach as far as we can.

Let us keep a world where men and women can choose to do what is right.

Let us ride. Let us glide. Let us confide.

Let us hide every now and then.

Let us go; let us stay.

Let us pray.

Glass half-Full

From Andalusia to Zagreb

Breeze blew ‘cross Byzantium

   ages ago,

passing passion along from ancient souls

   o’er peninsulas and shoals.

From Alexandria to Andalusia

   it blew the Medi stirring of our arcane East

   by westward winds past the European feast.

So it drifted between Aranjuez and Zagreb

   in periodic flow and ebb

   with rhyrhmic ebb and flow

   through passionnata on stringéd bow . . .

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g91kQyy4G7E.

   . . . at providential and the muse’ behest,

   and set in sculpted stone: eternal rest;

   portraying Piéta Jesu through Michelangelo,

 

   as still the women come and go

   ‘cross Eliot’s wasteland scenario.

From Ave Maria in Madrid

   this opus we/they did;

   even SaintSaens’ secular Swan

   summons that age-old bond:

   reflecting melancholic tension

   in existential apprehension

   again and again and again;

   the passion passes

   through striving laborious hands

   in colored or melodic strands.

On moonlit nights;

   sonata strains reflect the light

   from hand to frantic hand

   and back again.

Did history require

   two world wars

   and a string of smaller frays

   to say

   our living legacy dies daily?

Yet does our living tragedy thrive daily,

   in this human soul of frailty.

Why even a saintless ’60’s Superstar

   drove our anguished digression,

   our zeitgeist obsession,

   as passion passed through

   rejected hands again

   as passion passed through

   conflicted lives again

   as passion passes through

   immigrant pathos again

   and again and again

   to reveal those nail-scarred hands again

Again.

   Must be something to it;

   we should not eschew it:

Those despiséd and rejected ones of men--

   again and again and again:

   the passing man of sorrow,

   yesterday, today, tomorrow—

   the woman acquainted with grief,

   through death that steals in like a thief

   the stranger and the strange,

Again and again and again.

Must be something to it;

   we should not eschew it.

Glass half-Full

Covered People in Naked Society

They advise  strip off all baggage from old time.

They urge try fantastic low-hanging fruit.

They recommend taste little bit

They demand take nother byte

We ask who said kids do nude

We teach kids run for cover blude

We gather our children beneath mama skirts

We papa protect what left because it right.

They say go free of hangups

They say bare it all

They say it fun

They say uninhabit inhibition

We say go jump in lake

We had all we could take

We say you always on the make

We see you fake.

They catch up us at crossroads.

They judge us out of touch

They sentence us unfair and square

They say strip if you dare

We say  we dont care for it

We wont fall for come-on  tit

We  find unfriend message hit

We remember blood on holy ground

We all across the world hear sacred sound

We in spite of what goes down all around

We once was lost but now we found.

King of Soul

Upon Hearing yon Folk'n'Class Ensemble

Here be my silly February poem;

I don’t know where it cometh froem

except I saw it somewhere online

n thereby did watch it more than one more time.

If you as a yankee doodle

are going to not now be foodled—

if u going to make any sense of this,

you’ll have to click on du UTuub soundtrack, dis:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Un9sXWWuChU

Europa Europa where are ya

Ensemble Ensemble how are ya

Kumbaya Kumbaya who are ya

Strumma strumma votre guittara

Oh I remember Carlos Montoya,

‘though I grew up wit Tom Sawya.

Who’d’ve thought it

Who’d’a thunk it

to see him plunk it

while accordion dun wunkit

and orchestra delunk it

like Jordan when he dunk it.

Europo Europo wherefore art thou Europo

Could a rose by any other namo

sound so sweet as dis singing guittaro

caressed by yon blowing bandoneono

pluck’n forth allegro non troppo

while Europa fluttereth ah tiempo

n thereby revivin’ Europo du resonato.

Oh, I feel  Europo oughta be sustenuto!

Smoke

Baby Boomers' Labor Lament

Here’s a little ditty of a rhyme to be sung to the tune of . . .

Oh Home on the Range,

a song from back in the days of Davy Crockett, Howdy Doody, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans . . .

Oh give me a loan

so I can buy a home

where our kids and their friends can play,

where seldom is heard

a contentious word

and the mortgage is paid before my dying day.

Oh give me a job

so I won’t have to rob

from  Pete to pay Paul,

and so I’ll pay no interest on the cards;

and never shall we fall

on  bad times at all,

And I won’t have to work too damn hard.

Oh give me job security

by the time I reach maturity

so our competence is not made obsolete,

and the skills we were taught

don’t get replaced by a bot;

and my dignity doesn’t just lapse in defeat.

Oh give me a timely upgrade

so my life’s work doesn't fade

on the trash heap of obsolescence.

Oh please let me try

to outsmart the AI,

so my time's not spent out in the dread convalescence.

King of Soul

Those Two Brave Men

Once, but maybe never again,

two men

standing in the cold

one young and one old;

they meet

but decline to greet

in the middle of a confrontation

on hallowed ground of a dividing nation.

They do not speak,

for all around them arise a peak

of anger and resentment—

a country devoid of contentment

in the cauldron of history.

Seems now it’s become a mystery

what has become of our unity,

as now we’re obsessed with impunity—

blame the younger, not the older one

as the chieftain wordlessly beats his drum;

but while the young man struggles to maintain a smile

the world wide web spews a viral pile

of all the blame that’s fit to hint

as talking head trolls make their dent

in the warp and woof of the data tide

in which we slavishly slouch to hide

the downing of civility

and the haughty thrusting of hostility.

We ride the wave of accusative gestalt—

let us assign a verdict who’s at fault.

But whose fault it is I think i know;

let’s blame it on the undertow

of madmen on the right

pulling young men into the fight,

or maybe let’s blame it on the leftist cadres

who would depose those maga padres,

while all the while the widening gyre

spins up in streaming twitter fire.

Hourly it whirls higher higher

while all the while it was nothing more

than a clueless kid who for one moment tore

our torrent stream of data angst asunder,

generating for a moment some online thunder.

So what once was our peace and tranquility

slips beneath the dearth of our virility.

’Twas on a cold gray day, I say,

we beheld it— but  for never again—

those two brave men

standing in the cold,

one young and the other old.

Glass half-Full 

Shifting Sands Sublime

Beneath the appearance of things
behind the wonder that contemplation brings
there lies a universe of joy and pain
entrained upon whatever relics still remain
of a world colored by some eternal stain;
and wherever that stain remains
things are not and will never be the same
provoking some to surmise it’s just a game
that they can play and then refrain
from any effort to name
or explain.
And yet,
so many live for what they can get;
they allow no time to pause and let
life just happen along the way
so they can soon look back and say
what a joy it is to pause and stay
in the lingering light of a well-lived day
while the world just turns on come what may.
Oh, history breaks on sands far away
while here we enter into the fray;
we laugh or cry along the way
tomorrow and today,
I say, I say:
If I could comprehend this troubled world
so creative, yet destructively unfurled
I’d grasp the mystery, so sublime
that slaps between the sands of time
on this ever-shifting, long shoreline—

this consciousness of mine,
maybe it’s in or out of line
and maybe with a little sip of wine,
yes, I’d dream up some silly little rhyme,
and whether it be sublime and fine
or not worth a dime,
it nevertheless is mine,
and yet it can be thine
if you take the time.

King of Soul

Sand Beach

(With appreciation of Matthew Arnold’s poem, Dover Beach)

 

The Ocean is strong  today.

The waves roll in; the sun is bright

upon the Pacific. In this island surf the light

sparkles and tumbles; the rocky shores stand,

steadfast and vast, under a friendly sun.

Let’s do the beach; this afternoon’s energy is vigorous.

But hey! from this long splash of spray,

where sea meets the sun-kiss’d land—

Listen! we hear the pounding roar

of sand grains which the waves draw back, and fling,

forever, upon this high strand.

Beginning and ceasing, and then beginning again,

with a forceful rhythm it perseveres, to roll

The eternal resonance of wonder in.

 

Dear Matthew, back in the day,

heard this on the North Sea, and it brought

into his mind the ponderous ebb and flow

of our melancholy brood; we

hear it still the same; yet with that lamenting we discern

a reverberating of relentless purpose

in this pounding Pacific shore.

 

Oh sea of faith!

Persistent and unrelenting, all ‘round our earth’s shore—

you flap forever like folds of a bright banner unfurled.

Although I also feel

that ancient melancholy, the long, withdrawing roar,

retreating, in the breath

of the evening wind, laden with our roiling refugees

and the uncared-for masses of the world.

 

Oh, people, let us be true

To one another! For the world, which seems

to boil before us like a pot of strife—

so disjointed, so distraught, so stubbornly the same,

really has somewhere some joy, love, and even flashes of benevolence,

some certainty— here and there a little peace— even some easing of the pain,

while we here on this fragg’ed globe

get swept with fake news and tweeting dweebs who incite us,

as ill-informed combatants clash with their devices.

 

Glass Chimera