March 2020
I write poems, short stories, essays and novels. I grow perennial flowers in a garden in a home just outside of Boston, hike in the Berkshires,
and after working for newspapers for thirty years still contribute a small events column to the Boston Globe. A recent trip to Democracy Hall
in Philadelphia suggested a blog post on what might learn from the struggles of the founders:
https://prosegarden.blogspot.com/2019/12/the-garden-of-history-sacred-spaces-in.html
And a poem about a favorite nature preserve appeared recently in the American Journal of Poetry:
http://www.theamericanjournalofpoetry.com/v8-knox.html
American Rot
Sepsis gone too far
Surgery the only option,
cutting away the rot,
joint by joint,
cell by cell
We surrender a toe,
or two,
almost willingly
Who walks any more
anyway,
while we stare,
'devicively' at screens
Take the foot, why don't you,
and perhaps a hand
Give a hand for your country,
won't you?
What price the oblivion
of endless rot?
Sepsis of the spine
the brain stem
Sepsis of the body,
the uselessly failing limbs
they wave in the wind
like the flags of
forgotten nations
that went this way
Weimar, Athens, the Roman Republic
the body politic
flailing, feebly
Proscription for the intelligentsia
Salutes for the surgeon!
for the final solutions
to indelible conditions,
prior or whatnot,
that weaken the nation
Give him the pistol
now, why don't you
See how easily
he finds a trigger
with his teeth
Walking Back. March
Walking back from the ledge
March wetland walk
Nothing showing, wind whipped
Black holes high in the trees,
from which black birds sprang like caries
looking for hope in the frost-tortured ground
amid plastic bags, litter of
the plastic tribe
Hoping for
the west wind to shake the spring
from the milder woods and older rivers
Mountain elemental clouds
Season's endless ups and downs
Sending imaginary postcard
to a time to come
Spring green: winter dreams
Giving of Myself
Every day I'm resurrecting myself
Never enough of myself
always looking for more
Alone in my study, I'm so buddy-buddy
I go a little nutty
Inventing myself
Inviting myself
Indicting myself
Rewriting myself
I can't remember myself
(Who was that naughty elf?)
...just my last December self?
An unbeliever myself
— I want to wander, myself
to some other land of myself,
mushy and muffled
and, oh, nobody asked —
but I'm re-inventing myself
©2020 Robert Knox
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