December 2015
Ed Werstein
wersted@gmail.com
wersted@gmail.com
Despite being a life-long consumer of poetry, I spent 22 years in manufacturing before my muse awoke and dragged herself out of bed. I sympathize with poor and working people and I advocate for peace and against corporate power. My poetry has appeared in Verse Wisconsin, Blue Collar Review, Stoneboat and a few other publications. My first chapbook, Who Are We Then?, was published in 2013 by Partisan Press. You can find more of my poetry and other great poetry here: http://littleeaglereverse.blogspot.com/
Altar Boy, circa 1959
Incense and extinguished candles
scent my small-town Saturday night.
Post-benediction, our priest returns to the rectory.
Stained-glass filters church light into the dusk.
A mourning dove signals daylight’s departure.
We wait at the corner store
for the truck from the city.
Sunday’s early edition is dropped on the curb.
Despite the masthead: “Free Press,” dad hands me a quarter.
I carry the bundle into the shop
and return with our copy.
We drive toward the farm.
I’m comparing color comics to stained-glass,
discovering what trouble Dick Tracy is in this week.
Extinction
for Carl Sagan
Lactobacilli Mesenteroides eventually go overboard, acidifying their environment to the point they have, in effect, fouled their own nest. –Michael Pollan
Like Lactobacilli Mesenteroides
we’ve gone too far.
Our ability to reason has failed
to overcome our selfish nature
and we accelerate our way
toward extinction.
What was it for,
the 10,000 years we’ve recorded
with increasing speed
and decreasing truth?
For every organism except man
and that strain of bacteria
(and we call ourselves cultured)
selfish means surviving
for the good of the species
and here we are,
the first capable of contemplating
our own reasons for doing things,
to imagine a cosmic destiny
if only reason would win out,
and we’re blowing it.
And when we fail, what next beast
lurking in the shadows
will play the mole’s role?
And how long will the cosmos wait
until it can again contemplate its own wonder?
"Extinction" was first published in 2014 in Lake City Lights.
Incense and extinguished candles
scent my small-town Saturday night.
Post-benediction, our priest returns to the rectory.
Stained-glass filters church light into the dusk.
A mourning dove signals daylight’s departure.
We wait at the corner store
for the truck from the city.
Sunday’s early edition is dropped on the curb.
Despite the masthead: “Free Press,” dad hands me a quarter.
I carry the bundle into the shop
and return with our copy.
We drive toward the farm.
I’m comparing color comics to stained-glass,
discovering what trouble Dick Tracy is in this week.
Extinction
for Carl Sagan
Lactobacilli Mesenteroides eventually go overboard, acidifying their environment to the point they have, in effect, fouled their own nest. –Michael Pollan
Like Lactobacilli Mesenteroides
we’ve gone too far.
Our ability to reason has failed
to overcome our selfish nature
and we accelerate our way
toward extinction.
What was it for,
the 10,000 years we’ve recorded
with increasing speed
and decreasing truth?
For every organism except man
and that strain of bacteria
(and we call ourselves cultured)
selfish means surviving
for the good of the species
and here we are,
the first capable of contemplating
our own reasons for doing things,
to imagine a cosmic destiny
if only reason would win out,
and we’re blowing it.
And when we fail, what next beast
lurking in the shadows
will play the mole’s role?
And how long will the cosmos wait
until it can again contemplate its own wonder?
"Extinction" was first published in 2014 in Lake City Lights.
©2015 Ed Werstein