Here are some of the poems we heard in response to the take-away challenge to write a sestina or something relating to an old adage. Adrien managed to do both in the same poem.
1. Adrien Helm's sestina with the old adage as title, "The more things change, the more they stay the same."
“plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose”
Jean Baptiste Alphonse Karr 1849
The more things
change the more they stay the same.
Shackled in place
forever there to stay,
Since 1619 when
trans shipped here they
Were locked away
from freedom’s change,
Cut off, deprived,
of life’s abundant things.
No wonder they
cannot but speak of more.
Our greedy
forebears drove for more and more
Seeing the
“other,” black or red, the same
Rapacious in their
hunger for more things
Land and goods,
restless push to stay
Away from stasis,
always toward change.
The status quo,
“enough,“ unknown to them. (sic)
So enslaved built
the towns and homesteads they
Established and
grew to prosper more and more.
Presence of
abundant rich land meant change;
The continent’s face
was never the same,
And indigenous
folks could never stay
With whites who
plundered and coveted things.
Industrialization
soon drove things
With cheap labor
away from farms, so they
Prospered a new
way, and they didn’t stay
With slavery’s
“institution” anymore.
The Southern
economy stayed the same
And even unto
civil war resisted change.
Civil War, our
costliest, did bring change
Blacks were no
longer chattel, things.
But reality was
lived much the same
Their labor was
leased for petty “crimes” and they
Were slaves by
another name, and what’s more
In poverty, and
ignorance they’d stay.
From this and Jim
Crow they fled north to stay,
But racist urban
life was little change
As institutions
only promised more
And didn’t deliver
any of those things
That would assure
the fulsome life, that they
As human beings
deserved just the same.
People protest to
say they are not “things.”
With diverse
allies make this adage change:
The more things
change the more they stay the same.
AWH
6/10/2020
2. Moira Coleen's poem for change
CHANGEABLE
Grace is
in
The
windy blue of skye
Cloud of
Angels wing
Sweeps
the earth
In rising
retreat becomes
The
crocodile
Lolling
for a belly scratch
Moira Coleen
O’Neill
3. Lucette's poem about chance, not change
THE CHANCE YOU TAKE
Speeding down
the hills of that town
on her blue Schwinn
no hands
she once believed that
due to her consummate
balance and in no small
part her youth
she was in complete control
of the bike
of the street
of her larger than
life
and couldn’t imagine that
one future day
balance impaired
control ceded
to those stronger
and younger
she would clutch those
handlebars with both hands
choose only the safer
streets and hang on
as if her shrunk
down life was worth
the caution
Lucette Bernard
June 9, 2020
4. Another sestina, Sylvia's, but not to an adage
Sestina for a Father and Son
Ángel (AHN hell, really)
pushing his son whose name
is Máximo, his middle child,
still only two years old,
past a Black Lives Matter sign
across the street, then into the shade
over the play car, ready for shade
after all those police cars – really
more than needed, a glaring sign
funds are to the max (to play on a name) --
so many of them in their old
parking lot -- they’ve another now, new – child
of only two even older than it, boy child
born brown, not black, but shade
protects him from being darker, old
hope of Mexican parents, really
not a hope of his own he would name,
Angel, but the times are a sign
or his neighbor wouldn’t have that sign
in yard across from him and his brown child,
brother to Katia and Belén by name,
one older, one a baby, inside now in shade
of their mother Miranda’s love, really
their grand protection, even until they’re
old.
But just today, past police cars in the old
parking lot – as if it were a sign
that all is well, and beautiful, really –
Angel’s pushing son Máximo, their child,
past the glare of the day into shade
now, into green space without a name
in his little car, little son whose name
resembles Maximilian’s, that kindly old
French ruler who died in Chapultepec shade
because he couldn’t read the sign –
assuming he was fine, like a child –
that he would be permitted to escape, really.
No, there’s shade for a son whose name
is Máximo, really, not that old
Emperor’s. A good sign, this passage
with his child.
Sylvia
Manning
June
8, 2020
5. from Kathryn Kyker
Learning to See
We puzzled over
that John Denver lyric, profound
philosophy at 13, silent agreement
—not to ask any other —
just wait to see.
When did we know we knew? Being lost in the woods
blinds you to essential truths:
how love can’t cure madness—
how you can’t love a child happy—
how myopic understanding needs a wide lens to find the way out.
That first lesson comes in hard—love is not always enough but you love anyway.
Years later to see a lesson in the fruit we’ve borne, the lives
we’ve grown into, claimed as earned, our places taken—
ground held by ancestors—saving space, enriching the soil, shutting out others,
shepherding our shot—
an orchard of inequity.
Getting the best place in the sun is a race and we cooked the odds.
If we see only our tree
of rights, we miss a
forest of reality.
Kathryn Kyker, June 2020
6. from Ellen Mass
Taming our Fame
Traveling along my earth path train
Down hills stunted with force and might
Everywhere in green forest, the same
I search for reason but in vain
Only muffled sounds come to heal my pain
There’s a future sing my birds, but only with humans’ name
Disease and sickness falls heavy like rain
We know not from where it came
Nor who to blame
Covid’s passing will leave the world in hard stain
We’ve devalued our species over and over again,
Death of so many - how lame
There’s hommage to give - bow to remain
Through struggle, try to sustain.
Our honor and inclusion
to regain
Ellen Mass
6/10/20
Shining Sow’s Ear
Have the grit to change those dying beliefs
To Better than they appear
The essence of goodness - that you hold dear
When agreed, our moral soul is the goal.
We often give slight to a beautiful sow’s ear
as disdained species, goveling and dirty that we fear
But really, her ear is soft and silky,
If we Dare get near
Try to enhance what is rancid or stale
Try to elevate what is dull and pale
leave my lovely pig alone twitching its curled little tail.
