By James T. Stemmle
PROMPT—Privilege ...
just wondering about my white privilege
whether it’s needed to believe the universe
is friendly god loves everyone good beats
evil love beats hate life beats death wait
selah life lives with death and death always
wins fact of life what’s to fear of what shall
I be afraid the bird cage protects where the
covenant is you shall be my canary and I
will be your human I give security so you
have no more need to be nervous but I also
impose limits that may change your nature
a cage of commandments beyond which is
danger but I love you your beautiful shape
your song your body that flies my imagination
to freedom taking flight as my superpower
and here I look across from one portal of
divinity to another to you my pet who are still
a bird true to your nature within constraints
artificial if not arbitrary jumping your perches
you can still fly but if you escape it’s back to
chaos and danger scratching out a living life
it turns out is not binary slave or free life or
death but a mix a complexity two opposing
ideas both containing truth held in tension
hoping for all truth lusting after the complete
set both country and western chaos and order
free and constrained
James T. Stemmle is an old man, currently living retirement in WV with his wife. In warm weather, he writes poetry during morning meditations on a bench in his back yard, where, immersed in nature, it is so quiet that, depending on atmospheric conditions, he can sometimes hear interstate traffic four miles distant. He had a Federal Government career mostly with the EPA and has a doctorate from Catholic U in Chemistry. He is eager to share more of his accumulating poetry, currently enough to fill 7 one-inch binders and part of the 8th. He has published seventeen poems so far in several small literary magazines including: The Octillo Review, Evening Street Review, The Raven’s Perch, Deep South Magazine, Hektoen International (a journal of medical humanities), Literary Veganism, Choeofpleirn Press, Seattle Star, Poetry Superhighway, and Open Arts Forum. Born in Louisville, KY, James currently writes from Falling Waters, WV.
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