THE WARMING

by Royal Rhodes

Scientists confirm global warming is accelerating faster than ever recorded —Science Daily, October 29, 2026

There is nothing menacing

here, at this moment,

even if the birdsong expected

does not begin

and the helicoptering bees

are heaped in the quiet
cenotaph of their hive.

Friends have started

to note reports of phantom

leg pain, rising respiratory

distress, an increase

in strokes, but no one

can think of any

cause or condition.

We live on a hill

of sand and gravel,

broken rock and shale

that was once a sea

where mixed forests stand

and meadowland breathes.

There are no extremes.

Local trends become

markers for global

change. What had been

stories of hardship

conditions we survived

now loom increasingly

as unsurvivable oracles.

The aftertaste of drought

and the hundred-year floods

alternate quicker,

once so distant from

the far ice-floes

and melting glaciers
collapsing in Greenland.

The gradual rise

transforming Siberia

into a year-round orchard;

deserts blossom in constant,

heavy inundations,

while on the coast they cry:

"The sea is coming in."

Why think of it,

or pack our dreams

with it, if not likewise

shattered, at least yet?

Unbearable stories of grief,
they say, are otherwise

good for you, they say.

If we must face

loss on this scale,

how do we shift

our old narratives?

What model exists

to shape it? Only look—

the landscape never forgets.

Royal Rhodes retired in 2018 as the Donald L. Rogan Professor of Religious Studies at Kenyon College. Alongside a number of academic works, his poetry has appeared in many literary journals, in an earlier art/poetry collaboration with Claudia Esslinger, Specimens and Reflections, and  in several works with The Catbird [on the Yadkin] Press. He also served as Editorial Consultant for the Visionaire Bible 2000.

TREES IN SPRING

by Royal Rhodes

David Hockney, who died on Friday, painting in Normandy in 2020. Photograph: David Hockney in The Guardian

Hockney shaped the Lockdown into art --
an old half-timbered house in Normandy,
and made a cider-press his studio.
The synchronized, rich colors that we see
in pallid light with white tonality
in fruit trees and a pinkish sky take part
with summer greens around a bright blue pond.
"My little Bayeux tapestry, " he called
these scenes of painted whorls and arabesques.
Reflections show reality exists
in splashing drops of rain and morning mists,
as wind and moving boughs create a bond,
even if no breath of wind is felt.
One storm can set the blossom's wind-blown fates,
transforming how we viewers see ourselves.
A world we know intensifies, inflates
the voices of laments each throat creates.
We see a light that helps the winter melt,
as trees pass nutrients from heart to heart.
The openness of strokes has moved his brush
in twisting marks appearing in the hundreds,
a deft illusion of the real we rush
to feel before Corona comes to crush
us just as hoped-for Spring can truly start.

Royal Rhodes is a poet whose poems have appeared in numerous literary journals, including several times in The New Verse News. 

LESSONS OVER 80 YEARS

by Royal Rhodes

Physicians for Social Reponsibility

     "...then uncontrollably I began to weep..."
           —Derek Walcott, Another Life


The original child bomb
at an early hour
in the Far East
burst in the August air.

It made the atmosphere
truly luminous
like god-particles
in transfiguration of light.

Pedestrians on a bridge
were silhouettes
racing to paradise
as Buddha's smile froze.

And now after decades
the terror birthed
there, a monster
birth, is wombed again.

Treaties are twisted into
origami devil dragons
and peace bells again
are blessed but silenced

new technology multiplies
death for millions while
protesters are sent to jail,
making death much safer.

We have disremembered
the faces moistened
with molten jellies
from upturned, burst eyes.

Royal Rhodes is a poet whose poems have appeared in numerous literary journals, including several times in The New Verse News.

LAZARUS RISES AGAIN

by Royal Rhodes

remembering “The New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus

White House says it will not return the Statue of Liberty to France. A French politician said the U.S. no longer deserved the legendary monument. —Politico, March 17, 2025

The White House sense of what we owe to France

forgets why we are not a monarchy.

This "mighty woman with a torch," perchance,

shows with her flame its dark autocracy.

Yorktown and the sword of Lafayette

have been suppressed in its new made-up tales.

Will God forget us, if we too forget?

As "world-wide welcome" in our marrow fails?

Exiles sought for freedom like fresh air.

America was built by diverse hands,

ignored by a self-centered billionaire.

A golden door was open to all lands.

For wealth, new tyrants rule by greedy whim.

Can someone teach this statue how to swim?

AI-generated graphic by NightCafé for The New Verse News.

Royal Rhodes is a descendent of migrants here in the 17th century from England, and in the 19th century from Ireland.

DAYS OF ABSENCE

by Royal Rhodes

Trump’s promise of mass deportation throws undocumented Texans into fear, uncertainty. —Texas Public Radio, December 19, 2024

Was I asleep and missed the sudden Rapture

that took the nameless with familiar faces?

Where did they go, with all the little ones?

The guy who cut the hair of homeless Vets,

the smiling pizza boy, and couriers?

Our well-trimmed gardens are now overgrown.

Produce at the market costs much more—

no strawberries for even ready money.

And who will take our dogs for daily walks?

These days of absence seem so rude at best.

Are we supposed to give Grandma a bath?

She knew the helper more than she knows us.

Are they on retreat deep in the desert

in prayer and fasting from all food and water?

In church they took with us the bread and wine,

but sat apart or stood beside the door.

Have angels raised them up to Paradise?

Was it the Rapture or some plotted rupture?

Royal Rhodes is a poet whose poems have appeared in numerous literary journals, including several times in The New Verse News.

CRYPTO RISES FROM THE CRYPT

by Royal Rhodes

AI-generated image from Shutterstock

“The Crypto Comeback” —The Daily, May 21, 2024

The bell tolled for cryptocurrencies,

doomed in its sheer insufficiencies.

But halving came

to goose its game

so bitcoin seduces new licensees.

A trial judge had jailed poor Bankman-Fried,

a name that Dickens, I think, would have tried

for a modern-day Scrooge

as a free-market stooge,

giving Wall Street a bullish new pride.

Investors had cried when their gains bid adieu,

so turned to the courts to argue and sue

with tort after tort.

But now a report

says their payback includes all interest accrued.

Royal Rhodes is retired and is grateful for the Social Security safety-net and government regulations.

GASSED

by Royal Rhodes

Today, U.S. officials announced that the final munition in the nation's obsolete stockpile of chemical weapons has been safely destroyed—a disarmament milestone decades in the making. 

—U.S. Department of Defense, July 7, 2023

Gassed (1919) by John Singer Sargent —Wikiart

The staggering line of gassed soldiers, each Tommy blindfolded as if in a deadly children's game, moved slowly over a ground-cover of wounded and dead, and were linked by a sagging rope of hands on shoulders. The society painter, more famous for portraits of the wealthy and renowned, a world of watered-silk frocks and highly polished silver tea sets, covered a vast canvas with these larger-than-life figures that overshadow the startled visitors gazing at the past. In the background a spirited soccer game caught their eye.

War made forests ash

and remade farmland

to fields of headstones

Royal Rhodes lives in Gambier, Ohio, and has published poems in The New Verse News, Ekphrastic Review Challenge, and Snakeskin Poetry.

WHILE STILL I STAY IN WONDERLAND

by Royal Rhodes

Companies Agree to Pay $19B in Opioid Settlement.

           —BioSpace, June 12, 2023

One pill

makes me lighter—

ether from Elysium—

seeing the world in pixels.

One pill

makes me forget.

Did I take this pill

already and even yesterday?

One pill

lets me blink

and conjure unicorns,
feeling sweat on my hide.

One pill

when I awake

projects old photos

of poets stifling words.

One pill

lifts me, another

drags me headlong.

Fear makes my mouth dry.

One pill,

the last, bestows

on me all I desire

most: a glimpse of nothingness.

Royal Rhodes is a retired educator. His poems have appeared in Ekstasis Poetry, Ekphrastic Poetry Challenge, Foreshadow Poetry, and other literary journals.