Thursday, July 10, 2025

the center has trouble holding

 

all too tenuous


how can we see the world

as both complex and whole,

and as tenuous and primed to fall apart?


a tropical storm formed itself south of us

and moved right over us yesterday,

rain and rain and rain, 

not just in inches but approaching a foot

across central North Carolina:

floods, power outages,

electricity no longer a given,

water and light needing work-arounds,

the Internet, sine qua non for tv, music,

for webbing words and thoughts and orders,

back and forth, that Internet no longer there

to hold up our lifestyle,

even my beloved Kindle rendered mute to new books

until we are safely held again in the Web,


a month ago, the house of cards that is my body,

glitched, my back deciding to forget

how to move with ease and unconscious abandon,

that complexity of system no longer there so easily for me,


like thunder, before the storm fully hits,

I shake with what I feel as warnings,

the center, as Yeats warned, can have trouble holding.



by Henry H. Walker

July 8, ‘25

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