The Rain Weighs In
Even the rain appears given to extremes—
parched earth, drenched earth, the dusty and the drowned.
So little moderation in all issues.
What adjustments in a day will not be this dream
or that, however how our dearest fears resound.
Even the rain is savvy to extremes,
but modest items arrive. Take this morning’s
early bathe, a limpid sifting-down
missive for moderation in all issues,
arriving because it did halfway between
midpoints—equinox and solstice—it discovered
our speech, like rain, appears given to extremes,
and feeds a move of vilifying memes
as each clarification seeks its floor.
To favor moderation in all issues
seeds paradox. The ends destroy the means.
Assay the simple repair, the decide, the clown.
No easy rain can mollify extremes
when fashionable nations fall for little kings.
Lisa Rosenberg is the writer of A Totally different Physics, winner of the 2024 American Legacy E book Award for Poetry. A former house program engineer educated as a physicist, her work has been acknowledged by a Djerassi Leonardo Residency, Wallace Stegner Fellowship, and MOSAIC America Fellowship. In 2017-2018 she served as a regional Poet Laureate in California. Her poems and multidisciplinary essays seem in venues corresponding to Plume, The Threepenny Overview, POETRY, The Widespread, and anthologies.
Header picture by Steve Artwork, courtesy Pixabay. Photograph of Lisa Rosenberg by Thinh Le
