A PRAYER FOR WISDOM

          Let’s pray we Homo saps are growing wise
          Because we’re overdue to realize
          What is of greatest value to the world:

          Those latencies within to be unfurled
          We finally learn to use to benefit
          The Earth—as sanity makes requisite.

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THE GREAT TURNING

     Our human race now squanders and degrades
     The gifts our bounteous planet freely gives,
     Oblivious of how its splendor fades,
     A threat to every wondrous thing that lives.

     Though the most promising of every kind,
     The pinnacle of evolution’s trek,
     We “Homo sapiens” have yet to find
     The wisdom to avert a global wreck.

     Let’s hope our present adolescent stage
     Will be outgrown and new sagacity
     Evolves to mollify our mad outrage
     So we may learn sustainability—

          Or better yet, that we may learn to nourish
          Attitudes that make our planet flourish.

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OUR HUMAN GOAL

               We study to appreciate
               What makes our species truly great,
               Which is our aptitude to learn
               What is of ultimate concern:
               Not merely how we might survive
               But how we’ll fully come to thrive,
               For only we may realize
               Our latent gift for growing wise:
               Discerning what to value best
               And setting that above the rest,
               Since that alone will make us whole,
               Leading us toward our human goal.

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WORTH

                     If you are to be wise,
                     Then you must realize
                     What is of greatest worth
                     In service to the Earth,
                     For Earth’s large enterprise
                     Is making our minds wise.
                     What then is wisdom’s worth?
                     To bring us mirth, not dearth.

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NEWSHOUR

AN EXERCISE IN MONORHYME

        The NewsHour team reports the day’s events,
        A nightly task of trying to make sense
        Of situations trifling or immense,
        Sometimes concerning national defense,
        Though typically on topics less intense:
        Huge issues they will carefully condense
        To simplify what at first glance is dense,
        And in and hour it seems they’ve put a fence
        Round the diurnal riot of events.

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A VALENTINE TRIPLET

                      This day Saint Valentine
                      Sends everyone a sign
                      That loving is divine;
           
                     Thus lovers celebrate
                     The opposite of hate
                      But what makes each a mate:
            
                      It’s kindness in the heart,
                      Now pierced with Cupid’s dart,
                      Which means they’ll never part.

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MUSE ABUSE

     In poetry the form collaborates
     In partnership with your own native wit
     By opening unpremeditated gates
     To what surprisingly is meet and fit.

     Because of rhyme and meter’s strict demands,
     Your mind’s compelled to figure out new ways
     Whereby your narrow consciousness expands—
     Fresh meter comes, and bright ideas blaze.

     That now so many poets have cast off
     What they have found too onerous to use,
     Exulting in their freedom, and now scoff
     At formalists, just disrespects the Muse,

          Who says that music is the lyric’s heart,
          And those who leave it desecrate the art.

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