Oh yes, you
can, too,
speak to what’s happening in the country,
whether in pod-cast, prose,
or in poetry.
As for me, I’m old enough, you see,
to remember when Bull Connor
turned the firehoses
on people, for there
it was in the nightly news
on our black-and-white Zenith TV.
Then the civil rights workers in Mississippi
and the little girls in that church in Birmingham.
And now here is the man
who in his first term called
all of sub-Saharan Africa “s - - - countries,”
back again for Round Two,
rappelling men out of helicopters
to break down the doors
of Chicago apartments and extract
men and women in front of their children
or blowing up boats and killing people on the ocean,
but too cowardly to give the Ukranians
the missiles they need to hold off the Russians:
yes, you’d better believe, following Alexander Pope,
who three centuries ago said and argued
anything he wanted to,
I can damned sure say all of this in a poem!
David Stevenson
Farmington
