Elegy for a Foe

I am old enough to remember the world.

It was a place – a thing apart from us.

Not changing at a whim, but hard and sure:

Bright, cold, indifferent, beautiful and strange.

Now all I see is me, reflected back

From every glowing surface, large and small:

My face, my name, my hobbies and beliefs,

And what I will know next, love next, and buy.

It’s all so easy.  But where is the world?

It’s still there somewhere, I assume – but how,

In all this tailored seamlessness, can I,

A man like any other, find a thing

That isn’t what I’m seeking?  Should I try?

Maybe it doesn’t matter.  After all,

We’ve always sought out burrows, havens, towns,

The better to keep out that hungry world

That loved us not, nor trembled if we died.

So why not, then, this haven of the mind?

This customized existence, made for me,

And lovingly adjusted as I move?

Why not enjoy this latest victory

Over the fierce place that gave us only life?

Still, I’m old enough to miss the world.

Just old enough to miss the world.

Those barely younger won’t know what I mean

When I extol the virtues of a place

That never knew us, or attempted to,

But shaped us, coined us, made us what we were.

In Praise of Swamps

Swamps are the glory of the fall -
Their blaze defiant, profligate, obscene.
In lurid reds and jaundice-yellows, bright
With luminous decay, they flaunt themselves,

While stately wooded hills, too cramped and smooth,
March boldly on, in proud, in tedious ranks,
And lone trees high in pastures reach
Their peak too quickly, and are scarecrow-bare.

Give swamps their season; give them this, their due.
No foot will find its comfort where they lie,
Nor will a straight and questing tower break
Their mucky earth, and thereby breach the sky;

But this distinction they uniquely claim:
To be the jewel in autumn's crown of flame.

[October 2016]