This poem will appear in the next issue of Monkey Kettle magazine.


Placeholder Poem

A sense of wonder is wasted on me:
Amarcord vitiates all presently
Beheld wonders which the Lord Lapidary,
As shaper of the Pale Blue Dot, sees fit
To append to this middle-aged bit
Of my wonder-garlanded life.

Wonders and memories – ever at strife!
This present wonder is a placeholder,
Cowed by the meretricious hues
And idyllic light that, as an older,
More maudlin man, I will use
To populate my memory of it.
The memory that will eventually sit
On the chair this wonder keeps warm,
Prevents me from seeing this thunderstorm
And hearing my children counting;
Oh Lord! the wonders are mounting –
“One Mississippi, two Mississippi” –
And a sense of wonder is wasted on me.

Poets ninth removed from the Somme,
Deprived of generous hell will glom
Onto trifles – glory torn asunder…
Without war’s horrors, and while every wonder
I encounter is detracted from,
I have to be careful not to glom
Onto trifles, more than most;
And I wonder, if I didn’t host
This sense at all, and didn’t try to rhyme,
What truths
Might I be forced to write about.
Lines written without a sense of wonder –
Playing footsie with nihilism under
The table, or something of grand import?
Let me find out – my calling is naught
Without war and doubly so while every
Present wonder is roiled by the memory
Of another I encountered in my past.

My children are counting, excitedly fast…
The abacus of distance.
Absent, as I dwell on some old wonder,
I apprehend neither lightning nor thunder,
So wistful am I of an erstwhile storm.