Late realizations (after Uvalde)
Honor and heart are at stake, and love.
We find ourselves mounting guard
over the truth,
and there’s ominous pushback.
You’d think keeping a trusting eye
on the bright, reliable pole-star and
steering accordingly
would keep us on course.
It’s no longer true …
There was a time when we could agree
on what was a basin and what
was a helmet,
but now everything is upside down.
Opposites today repel, like
reversed magnets, and simple truth
gets gutted
in the process, shivering in
pieces on the ground and scrapped.
Arrested are certain attitudes,
but unapprehended,
and we appeal to commonsense,
even though we know it has died,
sacrificed for prophesied destinies
and forgotten,
like the contented mornings of youth.
It’s a new era | of rancid absurdism.
We’re collared, unable to breathe,
swelling with blueblack comprehension
of the end,
and praying for impossibilities.
Witness][Bridge
The shuddering of
the tall hedge | an unseen act;
A broken voice
behind it, shouting,
then the pattern of
quick foot-flight.
Resolved to stay
uninvolved, I hang back,
refusing to witness
a thing that could
subsume me, hijack my
self and
turn me into a
participant, testifier,
actualizing agent,
teller.
To witness is to
surrender identity,
like the shadow of a
ladder when it’s laid flat.
In some ways, the
witness becomes the incident;
it would not exist
without the observer:
Witness as host,
witness as vessel,
witness as essential
diplomat representing
its reality.
I don’t wish to
donate my existence to
someone else’s
narrative
Or match my truth
against conflicting ones
that make me look
famished for attention
or daft.
Let me stay
[self]contained, integrated,
fully realized and
whole—my storylines
braided into the one
rope I use
to feel my way
across the rickety bridge
of living.
Someone else’s
weight on those old planks
will surely bring it down.
