by Rachel Landrum Crumble
It’s easy to pull weeds from damp soil,
to power down my front steps and break
a spider’s web and not know the little guy
is hanging on me like a kid grasping
a kite string, trying not to blow away
on a windy day.
My point is: we should have done more,
sooner. The weeds have taken over,
yet we topple lesser kingdoms without knowing
by just walking around in the world.
In one neighbor’s house, the TV news
frets the play-by-play of a trial
that’s just concluded. In another house,
the camera’s eye bears witness to the same event,
except the one on trial is the opposing party.
We have fashioned the media into our own ugly image.
Truth is on trial, and must sequester
for the duration. We can’t remember whether or not
this is standard fare. We gulp the wind from giant goblets,
still parched. We are too discombobulated to know
we are lost.
Let’s huddle together. Let’s find communion.
Sure, the wafer is thin and tasteless, but it symbolizes
something we can’t do for ourselves.
to power down my front steps and break
a spider’s web and not know the little guy
is hanging on me like a kid grasping
a kite string, trying not to blow away
on a windy day.
My point is: we should have done more,
sooner. The weeds have taken over,
yet we topple lesser kingdoms without knowing
by just walking around in the world.
In one neighbor’s house, the TV news
frets the play-by-play of a trial
that’s just concluded. In another house,
the camera’s eye bears witness to the same event,
except the one on trial is the opposing party.
We have fashioned the media into our own ugly image.
Truth is on trial, and must sequester
for the duration. We can’t remember whether or not
this is standard fare. We gulp the wind from giant goblets,
still parched. We are too discombobulated to know
we are lost.
Let’s huddle together. Let’s find communion.
Sure, the wafer is thin and tasteless, but it symbolizes
something we can’t do for ourselves.
Rachel Landrum Crumble retired from twenty years of teaching high school, having previously taught kindergarten through college. She has published in The Porterhouse Review, Typishly, among others, and recently Poetry Breakfast, Humans of the World, and forthcoming in Euphony Journal. Her first poetry collection, Sister Sorrow, was published by Finishing Line Press in January 2022. She lives with her husband of 43 years, a jazz drummer, and near 2 of their 3 adult children, and two adorable grand twins with another on the way.
