by Lynne Barnes
I felt challenged at first
by the language of the play.
I came to it weary, exhausted really,
no fault of the author or actors.
It is just so troubling now, out here
in humanity’s sad tilt toward cruelty.
This weighs on us all,
whether we recognize it or not,
like a season of dreary weather.
Arthur Miller’s complex word tapestry,
and the actors embodying his characters,
took our minds deep inside the insanity
of the Salem Witch Trials
echoing McCarthy’s time, and
reflecting our present moment
in a stunning mirror of art.
My mask muffled an involuntary
keening sound as the curtain fell.
Oh, dear playwright, dear actors,
dear visual, verbal musicians,
you struck soul-deep,
vibrating our collective psyche
as your high notes of sorrow’s music
hit like a fist to our chests.
Afterward, as we mingle with the cast,
bees of gratitude fly from our lips,
swarm our senses, pollinate
our newly watered, unfolding,
buds of resilience.
Author’s Note: This poem came first, followed several weeks later by this news article out of my home state of Georgia. Since this is graduation month, I decided to send along my poem and the link to this article about the disappointed students, ironically victims of the kind of witch hunt mentality Arthur Miller depicted so enduringly in "The Crucible."
Silencing the Witches in Georgia High School ‘Crucible’: And so it seems that the play about witch hunts, about the persecution of people out of hysteria, despite being an acknowledged American classic widely taught in high school classrooms and performed frequently on high school stages, had provoked the same moral persecution it portrayed as unjust. —Howard Sherman, May 22, 2025
Lynne Barnes is a retired psychiatric nurse and librarian living in San Francisco. She is especially honored that two of her poems have appeared in the past in The New Verse News. Her poetry memoir, Falling into Flowers (Blue Light Press, 2017) was a finalist for the 2018 Eric Hoffer Book Award.