The World According to Poetry #9
Correspondent
By Stephanie Wood Miller © 2019
He has grown intimate with the truth
In all its splendid remnants
Bleeding on the sidewalk
Burning
Unearthed
Hewed and dismembered
They always have a name, a cause, a religion
His eyes have grown tired
His heart paper-thin
Still, he knows the truth when it flits past
And lights nearby
He admires it
Captures it
Puts a pin through its heart
And presents it in an elegant frame
For the Record
Luminous black on blinding white
Its magnificent wings
Will lose their sheen and color
Dry
And eventually turn to dust
Lost in the oblivion of apathy and amnesia
Commentator
She toys with the truth
Gently molding it
To match taste and ratings
Catching the wave as it rises and crests
She churns out her words
In the dozens, hundreds, thousands and millions
And waits for them to echo
Inside her Lilliputian realm
She knows she has found her heading
When her words return amplified and embellished
Then she unchains the “truth”
And allows it roam
Spreading
Like rabies among children
From her lavish throne
She watches as her day’s work
Flickers and reverberates across the screen
Careless to its cost or consequence
Remembered, repeated, and retained
By those who fear the truth