Of Minor Use

The words move, even if we can't.

Writers write. Even when we cannot write. We write. It’s only a matter of whether we stop and allow the words to move through us or not. Early morning beneath the tree, they finally flowed.

This is where I, along with all of you, have found myself this morning. At the mercy of of a muse who insists I write. This is my offering. It is all I have to give. It is the only energy I want to give when much more of it is needed elsewhere.

Of Minor Use

I stand before the magnificence

of a gulping Catalpa tree.

The natives called it Catawba

and I much prefer this letter flow

not for its reference

to the vining wines of this region

but because of the rooting

to my past

as a youngster ferrying

across the great seas

of the great lakes

toward an island that was not such

on adventures we were free to choose.

But freedom is no longer free

neither is our yearned-for youth.

Now, we pay the price

for our willful ignorance

for the deplorables who laugh

for me who laughed with them

called them likable anyhow.

The Catawba canopy

of whole green hearts

shades and shelters

my partner and I

as we cry our way through the morning

though it cannot do the same

for others who cry their way

through the other mourning.

Catawba blossoms I stomp through—

moonstone blooms I never took

the time to name—

appropriately flitter around

after a poetry reading on climate

change, yet we cannot change

the other climates brought

about by this desperate need

to proclaim freedom

when most don’t even get the history.

Finally, day unfolds, the grief full.

The Catawba tree

can no longer be contained.

Rapid fire raindrops aim

at its church bell blossoms

swinging from the trees.

The water guns of the sky

pelt flowers that fall to the ground.

The hollow sound each petal makes

a bell tolling for our children.

They say you can eat the flowers

though they are of minor use

to our bodies’ bloated diets.

We would rather consume the beauty,

watch as opal blossoms wither and pale

die before our eyes.

AJW

5/26/2022

In memory of the children senselessly murdered at an Uvalde elementary school.