City Musings

I started to compose a poem in my mind as I walked down the city streets to the basement office where I volunteer every other week.  The idea seemed good, and I had the first two lines and the framework for several more.  I thought they would come quickly back when I could sit down and write them.  But at the office other things came up, and I didn’t get to think about the poem till I got home.  And then it was something like waking up from a dream that had seemed very profound but that I couldn’t make sense of at all.  I remembered a few words but not how they came together.  After I thought I would give up, it came together, though I think it’s quite different from what was in my mind earlier:

Bully without a pulpit

I walked, entreating the collective mind

Look: who you are is not defined

by what you buy, or tastes refined

through careful choice of things designed

to show your status and proclaim

alignment with some product’s name

I stepped into the crosswalk, feeling wise

to turn from all the billboards for the prize

of seeing how much better we are known

for what we’ve striven for, what we have honed

through stretching into what the day demands

through what we make with our own hands

I liked my words - I thought they would compel

except I didn’t know who I could tell.

©Wendy Mulhern
April 11, 2011