October 2020
Robert Wexelblatt
wexelblatt@verizon.net
wexelblatt@verizon.net
Author's Note: Summer’s solitary confinement has been lightened by a return to teaching at Boston University, although
at a distance, mediated by Zoom, and with anxieties of its own.
The poem below was written during a low spell in the course of our pathological, ecological, political, and social pandemic, prompted by a wholly unfounded, upbeat declaration by a public official. Sometimes, nothing makes you more pessimistic than optimism.
The poem below was written during a low spell in the course of our pathological, ecological, political, and social pandemic, prompted by a wholly unfounded, upbeat declaration by a public official. Sometimes, nothing makes you more pessimistic than optimism.
Nothing's So Precarious
The given world conceals its fragility
in cattail meadows, beechwood forests, in oceans
too wide to poison and songbirds in clear air
with hidden hooks of plastic everywhere.
We think a solid scrim’s behind our mortal motions
yet nothing’s so precarious as stability.
We rely on and so deny the fragility
of the Constitution with its iron sides
and rights, the job on which home and food depend,
the eternal pyramids that nothing can upend,
City Hall and church, families, seasons, tides.
Yet, what’s more precarious than stability?
The firmament underwrites our tranquility
though a slight shift of orbit or some novel germ
running like a vicious rumor through a school
or the reckoning from burning all that fuel
could bring a world pregnant with death to term.
There’s nothing so precarious as stability.
©2020 Robert Wexelblatt
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It is very important. -FF