Make a Difference
By D.R. James
—a villanelle to commencement speakers everywhere
Tonight, fatigue’s grim flower unfurls,
but Gandhi, gunned down, had this to say:
“Be the change you wish to see in the world.”
Oh? Even when casting before swine my pearls,
every action seems absurd, and all the day—
and tonight—fatigue’s grim flower unfurls?
Even though, in my disgust, I’d hurl
the grenades myself, I should, anyway,
be the change I wish to see in the world?
What about how resolve just sways and swirls?
What about colleagues countering, “Let’s pray”?
Especially then fatigue’s grim flower unfurls,
failure feels relentless, all fervor whirls.
But still I’m to spin—on these feet of clay—
this Be the change you wish to see in the world?
The global Bottom Line confirms I’m the churl
and binds me with a twist to the old cliché:
tonight, fatigue’s grim flower’s unfurled
by the change I’d wished to see in the world.
D. R. James has been teaching writing, literature, and peace-making at Hope College in Holland, Michigan, for 33 years and lives in the woods outside of Saugatuck. Poetry and prose have appeared in a variety of journals and anthologies, and his newest of seven poetry collections are If god were gentle (Dos Madres Press, 2017) and the chapbooks Split-Level and Why War (both Finishing Line Press, 2017 and 2014).
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash.