A Poetry Sporadical of Repeating Forms
A Poetry Sporadical of Repeating Forms
The moments gathered near the end of time
Where lifelines vanish at infinity
Are not ideals so thoroughly sublime
That writers can’t, with due concinnity,
Portray them to the mind’s attentive eye
As phases of a metaphoric sky.
Where lifelines vanish at infinity,
It isn’t strange to think a loving god
Might bring to pass a social Trinity
To help the pilgrim trapped inside a bod-
Y feel at home—and never laughable
To share a word with one so affable.
Are not ideals so thoroughly sublime
An adumbration of the good to come?
Or are they just one more white-collar crime
To rob the blind and cheat the deaf and dumb?
The Why? The How? and Who shall have to pay
What price? are not for such as us to say.
That writers can’t, with due concinnity,
Equilibrate the rapture and the pain
Is evidence that true divinity
Lies far beyond their ken. A driving rain
Beats down upon the saints as on all others,
No matter how their overbearing brothers
Portray them. To the mind’s attentive eye
There’s little difference in the pure gestalt
Of faithful strivers unprepared to die
And slabs of hapless fish preserved in salt,
And charity afforded failing students
Does not engender fortitude or prudence.
As phases of a metaphoric sky
Illumine spaces anchored in the here
And now, it’s sobering to ponder why
The ordinary mortal lives in fear
Of death. This life is water charged to prime
The moments gathered near the end of time.
C. B. Anderson was the longtime gardener for the PBS television series, The Victory Garden. His e-chapbook, A Walk in the Dark, is readable online.