Todd Mercer- A Poem

Apple-Leaf, Rose

 

Gentle as humans can aim to be, gentler still

is called for around the softest creatures, does

who idealize as a reflex gesture. They’re defenseless

against all sorts of shocks. We try not to name

calamities. No one levels with the starry-eyed ones,

saying, listen, the world is the world. Sorry for that,

fellow traveler. Easy as we’ve learned to hold a thread,

there’s easier yet. But we do know the real names

of the old-time Gods, the flawed ones who were toppled,

whose people set them aside. Pride and fear of enemies,

the building blocks of history. Which woods glade,

what Eden-ized bubble makes persistent optimists?

How can they live down in the same milieu we do,

and still sing those Pollyanna songs? It’s a marvel

they should bottle. Folks would pay a pretty penny

to believe that goodness will prevail.

 

TODD MERCER won the Grand Rapids Festival of the Arts Flash Fiction Award for 2015. His digital chapbook, Life-wish Maintenance appeared at Right Hand Pointing. Mercer’s recent poetry and fiction appear in: Bartleby Snopes, Cheap Pop, Dunes Review, Eunoia Review, Gravel, Kentucky Review, The Lake, Literary Orphans, Main Street Rag Anthologies and Misty Mountain Review