BARDOLATRY

    It’s one thing to compose, as Shakespeare did,
    A sonnet in but fourteen sonorous lines,
    A page-long scheme that’s worked out on a grid,
    Which constant practice readily refines;
    But then to dream up dramas, five acts long
    The two-hours’ traffic of his wooden stage,
    To entertain his varied, boisterous throng,
    Required the inspiration of a mage
    Who conjures spirits from the vasty deep
    And fills their mouths with splendid eloquence
    Urging his auditors to laugh and weep,
    Making the sound an echo to the sense.
         Who, since he wrote, has ever shown such wit
         Or honeyed eloquence so meet and fit?

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HUMAN ADVANCEMENT

for David C. Korten

         What would it mean for humans to advance
         beyond whatever progress we have made
         through history to dispel the trance
         of recklessness we always have displayed?

         So long we’ve striven for preeminence
         through dominance and exploitative greed,
         the wreckage of our history is immense—
         Earth urges us to find another creed:

         a kinder, gentler, true philosophy,
         communitarian in principle,
         designed to serve the whole with charity
         and not exalt the individual.

              An earth community, serene and whole,
              appears to be our evolution’s goal.

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NEMEROV 2014 #5

TOWARD WISDOM

      We are a dangerous experiment
      The Universe has curiously wrought
      To see if something so innately bent
      Can finally and happily be taught
      Through dangerous trial and error to grow wise,
      Which means to go beyond the cruelty
      And conflict of our past and realize
      Compassionate rapport and harmony.
      Like “sweet bells jangled, out of tune and harsh,”
      Our kind has yet to master harmony,
      And what might be high drama looks like farce
      Or worse—a universal tragedy.
           But still we may succeed and happily mend,
           If we take wisdom as our highest end.

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SHAKESPEARE REDUX

  If Shakespeare were alive, how would he write
  today, possessing the same intellect
  and gift for words, and spiritual insight,
  and would he have the same profound effect?

  I am afraid he’d find no audience
  who’d tolerate the liberties he’d take
  in shaping language eloquent and dense
  that to our unschooled ears would sound opaque.

  And yet his classic plays are still revered,
  still studied in our schools and colleges,
  and over centuries they have endeared
  themselves to us—we know what Hamlet says!

       So long as it be trippingly performed,
       our minds will lighten and our hearts be warmed.

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WONDERMENT

        The more I contemplate the vasty deep
         of the whole universe—or some now say:
         the multiverse—the macrocosmic sweep
         in all its seeming infinite array,

         the more assuredly I am inclined
         to think it not a random artifact
         of happenstance, but rather that a mind
         designs this scheme with subtlety and tact.

         Good Orderly Direction might translate
         the acronym of GOD impersonally
         to indicate a process no less great
         than some imagined, awesome deity.

              However we envision such a cause,
              the wonder of it all must give us pause.

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NEOMETAPHYSICAL

          Once more our paradigms begin to shift:
          the premises of science are adrift
          as outlines of a bold Akashic age
          suggest philosophy’s reached a new stage
          where here is there, or may be anywhere,
          now nonlocality is in the air.

          “The universe seems rather like a thought,”
          remarked Einstein: not physically wrought,
          but mentally imagined into being,
          then afterwards susceptible to seeing.

          Thus out of mind all matter would emerge,
          the product of some cosmogenic urge,
          then into mind again might disappear
          and instantly, across the void, appear.

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RECIPROCITY

    This little dog has quickly learned she can
    depend on us to service all her needs,
    and in return she seems to have a plan
    to service ours, and thoroughly succeeds.

    While we will feed her, brush her, give her walks,
    caress and cuddle her to show our care,
    her tacit body language all but talks,
    reciprocating love she means to share.

    How curious it is, when we pet her,
    expressing the deep fondness that we feel,
    it’s as if there were magic in her fur
    to make us feel the same as she must feel:

         Such is the natural reciprocity
         love generates, that binds and sets us free.

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AN EARLIER EPISODE

     Our little Tiggy’s tummy is upset.
     It gurgles as she lies between our heads,
     and though the sun has not arisen yet,
     I rise to see if we have any meds
     to settle her poor stomach, or some food
     she’ll eat instead, the better remedy—
     though when like this, she isn’t in the mood
     to savor what she’d gobble normally.
     Now, having turned down tasty offerings,
     she lies beside me in my writing chair
     as the first robin of the morning sings,
     and oddly now I hear no gurgling there.
          I hope when she awakens from her snooze,
          when offered food, she won’t again refuse.

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