Apathy is a Developing Response

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Apathy is a developing response.
Ask the young what should be done about some ‘X’
and they will answer with a certainty admired
by falling rocks which don’t so straightly plumb
the depths as do the certainties of youth.

In middle age, amongst their bouts of rage,
the folk, perplexed by living the long riddle
they call their lives, will entertain first doubts
about positions they once firmly held.
And then they’ll hold them tighter, fear letting loose

and a fall into ‘senescence’ — as we call
that acceptance Buddha lauds and Calvin hates,
where the answer to what one’s required to do
engenders daily less hot animo
and more and more a careless ‘I don’t know.’

Migration

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There had been tears enough last night. Now, breakfast settling
and the blood clotting darkly on his wounded arm,
he pulls his wet coat on. Stands up. And walks.

There had been tears enough last night. Her smartphone charged
up in the station where they’d tried to sleep,
she stands. She pulls her wet coat on. She walks.

Café ’t Smalle at 16:26

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October shade thins out what’s left of sun,
reminding us who notice life is short.
I order Tarwebok and choose a table.
Out in this weather, half of them are free.

Slim mothers flaunt spring babies in blue prams.
The artist owing me pretends to blindness.
He edges past, eyes fixed upon the boats
that queue along the quay and out of sight.

A couple and their casual guests stand up.
He cranks, the motor coughs, the guests fall in
the open cockpit. She gives a salty wave
to us ashore, singles up the lines, and hops

upon the bow so slightly, lightly, well
the boats don’t even waddle by the quay
and she and they and sun and boat depart
and I salute another ’t Smalle day.

Cyclists and Wild Boars Encounter

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We, Homo sapiens sapiens, met them, Sus scrofa,
and having met, we can confirm they’re good.
Good to look upon, both fierce and fleet.
Good, because their twenty, to our eight,
could have, had they fought us, surely won
and we would not be writing but be et.
Good as the breakfast bacon that we ate.
We licked their chops, although we lack their tusks.

My Word

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My Stetson’s welcome, seeing that my hair,
thick as a furry animal’s in June,
is here in my October passing spare.
Unlike my words! They well from a lagoon
of similes. They cascade like a flood
of rhetoric to rage against the light.
They’re a lyric Lear-full sung by Elmer Fudd
who comes not that genteelly into sight.
I try to mitigate his senseless rant
with pearls of wisdom, but they don’t exist.
I winkle phonemes out of shells that can’t
be called sand free although they do persist
in staying pearl-less, peerlessly absurd.
I hear sea shanties in them, and my word.

An Autumn Urban Stroll, Amsterdam

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October blows brown leaves down. We are shopping.
We stock up on candles, ask about a chair.
Damp chilly breezes keep the strollers hopping
and no one’s sitting outside anywhere.
The headlines — seaborne plastic, radiation,
people fleeing warring powers everywhere —
are far away but never far enough.
On the next street we dodge past a prancing jester.
His coloured stockings, cap, and rubber ears
seem sensible in contrast to world news.
You’d think somehow a moral must be drawn
but I can’t find one though I’ve shopped since dawn.

Response

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Is apathy an acceptable response?
It feels better (because feels less) than other options
Which are available to us readers of the news
Where some police shoot children, and where kids
Kill lots of people with their parents’ guns.

It seems, to guns as news, that we adjust,
But more headlines beat on us every day
With floods, hate, lies, and thefts on grandstand scale.
We see wars, and photographs of screaming grief,
And unmitigated everyday small meanness.

Anthropogenic warming. Globe goes Bang!
Put on blinkers. Turn off all reports of spying.
Take pills of higher strength. Ignore the signs
Until it all hurts less, until you’re happy.
A little, sometime. Nearer apathetic.