Please visit https://www.youtube.com/@chickadeeproductions for a collection of programs by Poetry Club.
Topic: Methods and Strategies for Composing
Hosted: Ron
Poem: “Altered Landscape” by Ron
Recorded November 14, 2020
Ron puts his money where his mouth is by submitting his own poem (below) for this week’s discussion on strategies for composing.
On a yet uneventful fall morning
we tuned in, all channels, to news breaking.
We saw the monolithic twins tower
beyond the New York City skyline, higher arching
emblems of America’s enormous
wealth, unassailable power,
and leadership in world affairs;
and life-source of our nation’s busy-ness
The planes appeared, at first,
at the bottom of the screen,
by their diminutive presence,
simply to augment the scene,
then, turning toward the center,
disclosed their sinister intent:
to shatter our national serene
and apprise us of the error
of our culture and content,
by a sacrifice obscene,
and realize the awful threat of terror.
then collapse in a cascade more sudden
than our startled eyes and minds could follow
into a burgeoning mountain of rubble,
the billowing dust veiling the vast hollow,
and watched the constant replay, mesmerized,
unable to withdraw our captive sight
or avoid awareness of the massive scale of life
entombed within that monumental blight,
on the altered landscape of our lives
condemned always to carry the remnants:
seared mercilessly in each mind’s eye,
the indelible images and events.
shannon p. laws 