How to Become a Poet

And you know, feel, that this is how it looks,

the end of one earthly country.

--Czeslaw Milosz

Yesterday was a dark day for me.

I could not say "Happy 4th" 

for I do not feel happiness for our country.

We have descended into some really

deep destructive scary stuff.

Yesterday in the poem I read by Nick Flynn,

he quoted St. Augustine:

Do you wish to rise?

Begin by descending.

I want to believe this downward

motion we've been in for so long

is the way to rise again.

Michael Meade says it over and over.

The old world is already gone.

We are to be building a new one.

Yet...it still feels like demolition is all around.

 Is this how to become a poet?

Czeslaw Milosz reminds me of the horrors involved,

how we can lose a country.

It happened to my ancestors.

Now I feel it happening to me.