Some of the poems we read June 10, 2020

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.