—after the photograph “Going, Going, Gone” by Karen Elias
When conjugating, remember
the earth, how past piles up on present,
flattens future action, this once-full thirst-quenching
planet of sun-speckled blue and green now toppled and
leaking all over what’s left of the barren fields we’ve sown
with concrete and plastics, nothing but faux-flavored karma
to turn the pure upside down. But what if If still exists,
conditional tense able to parse a world beyond
Going, Going, Gone triptychs of doom, to
dig to the root to change, to the present
participle changing, meaning coming down
to who, what, where, why, how soon? Embody
the action of verbs. Delete the expected ending, choose
to adjust your subject (we) and suffix (changed). Reject all passive
voice and claim the simple noun of lesson, the urgent adverb of now.
This poem first appeared in NOVUS (2024).
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Professor Emerita of English at Commonwealth University, Presence assistant editor, and WPSU-FM Poetry Moment host, Marjorie Maddox has published 17 collections of poetry—including Transplant, Transport, Transubstantiation; Begin with a Question; In the Museum of My Daughter’s Mind; Heart Speaks, Is Spoken For; Small Earthly Space, Seeing Things and Hover Here (forthcoming)—plus a story collection, 4 children’s books, and the anthologies Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania and Keystone Poetry. www.marjoriemaddox.com
