Here is the poem of the week for August 30, 2024, first draft, first take. It’s about being woke to beauty, and I say that intentionally, aware of all that woke means. The same people who are afraid of us being woke to historic, present and systemic racism are afraid of us being woke to how they have stolen a trillion dollars from the middle class since the Reagan revolution of the rich or woke to how they are destroying the earth, but as Brian McLaren points out in his must-read book Life After Doom, we need to be woke to beauty as well. The destroyers of the earth should be even more afraid of beauty-wokeness because it unleashes the power of our love to tend and defend. So here is a series of seven loosely linked poems in haiku form, a “hai-net” fresh from this week:

life creates beauty
miracle enough
but then
hearts
that love beauty

life
that wild artist
made so many blossom scents
and then
garden sense

church easter lily
your heart saved from compost
blooms!
in your fall
garden

beautiful old old
wrinkled sagging flesh
wise one
she shines
and we love

even roadside weeds
browning and
bent with fall dew—
brave
complex—
life shines

great oaks and thickets
sleeping beauty
among thorns
love and kiss
this life

life makes us
to love so love
will make us tend life
dear heart
do your part

8/26/24