BELIEVING IS SEEING

by Phyllis Frakt
inspired by Ian McEwan, Enduring Love

cartoon by Bob Englehart

Self-interest is our malady.
The child cries mine! then grows up
to try a more wily strategy.
She invents suspect evidence,
then advances a conspiracy.
He amends the next textbook
to deliberately distort history.
Deniers, decriers, and liars 
turn science into travesty.
Their desires are a twisted warp
that thwarts all objectivity.
But the rut is cut so deeply
we’re all guilty of complicity – 
Yes, you! Even me, just possibly.

 
Phyllis Frakt's previous poems in The New Verse News are "Teach to the Test," "Caught in Between," and "Not in Our Star..." She lives in New Jersey.