Thursday, March 24, 2016

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



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