Making a Difference

We are living in desperate times. The rule of law is slipping away, the last shreds of our humanity are being consumed by ravaging wars and reality TV. What we need is a sonnet, now and then, to remind us of the pleasures of real ethical challenges, and the pleasures of putting them into words.

Remember those smarmy posters that show the back of a human throwing a starfish back into the sea? This was touted for a while as the starfish theory, that improving the life of one tide-washed starfish would change the world. Well, I always thought it wasn't quite that simple.

We cannot restore our precious earth without thinking about the hard questions, challenging our own prejudices, and refusing to accept conventional wisdom. We cannot survive without asking the questions, and as Rilke said, living the questions long enough to understand, finally, that we have lived our way to the answers. This sonnet was my feeble attempt to live the questions, or describe what it might mean to live the questions, rather than living the slogans.


Upon this tide-washed beach the live star lies
And calls to me with challenge ethical:
Toss her back into the sea or walk away.
Above my head ten hungry terns circle
Carnivores gray and black casting death's shadows.
My quandry: the star's fate at my clay-formed feet.
How oft the query here in tidal shallows
Posed,when maybe greater hearts freed stars from land.
But I thought today the terns, too, depend
On salted bounty tossed by wind-bent brine.
Eons before I walked this littered strand
Ocean-tossed stars upon these sands did shine
And fed the shorebirds hunting in bright bands.
The star? The bird? The ocean or my hands?

Ben's Songs

In the long light of an autumn day
my small son dances
at the end of our driveway.
To what music?
No boombox thumps,
no car radio intrudes,
nothing you could dance to:
the roar of a garbage truck,
a passing car, a barking dog.

But Ben feels some
happy, silent beat,
and matches the rhythm he
hears: knees bent,
bounces up and down,
hands splayed,
arms stretched, embraces
the moment in the
sinking light.

He looks up at me, beaming,
and reaches for my hand.
As our fingers touch, I hear it:

crickets in the dusk.

I join his dance
in the golden light
of his Autumn dance hall.

The world sings to my son
songs I have forgotten
until he dances them to me.

Texas Mother's Song

Eleven years ago
my son came early.
His father left before that.

So I drove the pickup
to the hospital,
amniotic fluid soaking the seat.

They gave me pitocin and a hard time.

When he was born
he had trouble.
I spent five days

sitting near his isolette
holding his red fingers:
then we could leave.

I walked us down that long hall,

my shoes squeaking
on the tile floor,
the plastic car seat

bumping my hip.
I thought the green walls
would fall on us,

then we made it out the double doors.

The asphalt was soft
beneath the Texas sun
I could see the pickup

listing at a hundred yards:
a flat. Nothing
to do but change it.

In the rosy evening light, I put him in the bed

and changed that tire.
Bone weary, I drove
us home to my father’s house.

No one fussed over us.
Today my son came home
to a strawberry short cake.

Eleven candles burn in the center.

My father says,
“It seems like yesterday
you came here

a wrinkled little
red bastard. Now
look at you.”

My son blushes at the words.

Tomorrow we will
put our things in the bed
of that truck

and drive away
to Chicago
where a new job waits.