The allegory idea came first, actually. I was thinking about how, and whether, everyone and everything could somehow get along in such a divided socio-political scene, and when the players entered in, I thought about the old dramatic allegories, like Everyman, that would personify concepts and groups. Now I had this older genre kicking around for a poem that’s taking up hard stuff but wants to be a little light and encouraging, so doing the rhymed approach seemed to fit; I rarely write in rhymes, and I hadn’t written a sonnet in a long while, and voila!
Well, we enlarge the grown-up table for
the far-flung fragments of our Family.
Here’s our current Winter spent in agony,
here’s our disrespected Sister, here is War
that mushrooms undiminished, glibly tears
our global Soul to slivers. And here We are;
and here’s a Brute beside us so bizarre
that nearly nothing else we’ve known compares—
as if we’d acceded to some greater Hell.
Ah, but here’s what’s left of human Dignity.
Seated here’s Resolve to trample Travesty.
But there’s our Greatest Fear that’s hard to quell….
Hey, this isn’t fatalistic Falderal!
We must make sure the table’s set for All.
—first appeared in Writers Resist
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