Submit your work, meet writers and drop the ads. Become a member
 
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
Madison's defense of the establishment clause to the Virginia
      legislature:
Religion both existed and flourished, not only without the support of human laws, but in spite of every opposition from them, and not only during the period of miraculous aid but long after it had been left to its own evidence and the ordinary care of Providence.

                                          May I say
electromagnetic waves. Radiant energy.
Light travels in waves
                                      Waves of what?
Electromagnetic waves consist of electric and magnetic fields
oscillating at right angles to each other
and to the direction of motion of the wave.
                                                           ­             All waves can be described
in terms of amplitude, wavelength, frequency and speed.

Waves of what?
                            Think of a hand waving. The wave itself
is virtual, ideal. The hand and eyes are waves. The wave's
a quantum guess.
                           Religion and electromagnetic waves - visible, audible, ideal
causing real reactions in earth-time (real as it gets). Madison's
ordinary
               care of Providence
                                               impossible to handle.

Needed is a medium: antenna, cathode ray, page,
body
          hairy, sweaty
                                 diurnal
with the capacity to say Providence electromagnetic visible light
element god.
                       Alone in your life and body. Say
the heavy word
weighty word
isotope
             charged word (ion god)
the particle physicist and political philosopher have it over the poet
who is sharing ignorance
                                           pretty much all he doesn't know.

Or who stays within a dimension she knows she knows, extrapolating
her hand in a child's hand or husband's hold or nest in a tree hole
limited government
                                  separation of powers
                                                          ­            daily low intensity warfare
light, radio and gamma waves
                                                     Waves of what?
Matter can be treated by both wave and particle theories (the duality of matter) since its convertible counterpart - light - has long been treated successfully by both theories.
convertible counterpart
                                         light matter light

Solutions to the equations are called wave functions, or orbitals.
Religion or the duty which we owe our Creator and the manner of discharging it can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence. It is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of Citizens, and one of the noblest characteristics of the late Revolution. The free men of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle. We revere this lesson too much to soon forget it.

Last night's movie She's No Angel on the Christian channel
begged many essential questions (and had bad music)
                                                          ­                                  why
the loving liberal successful couple should
keep a shotgun in the home (later used per Shakespeare)
                                                    ­                                           what
the community's (authority's) reaction to the violence
and precipitating dissembling might have been (per The Crucible)
                                                       ­                                             whether
the golden spiritual couple would subsequently dissemble lobby or
      defend
themselves and the loved one legally and lengthily (per Dostoyevsky)
                                                    ­                                                   where
unclean tragic outcomes end in Death's cleanliness
ravens eat the fur and guts of bad guesses off the roads (per A
      Designer of Systems)

but not I think missing
the deeper lesson

that she is neither her past
nor her wings

but a pure goodness
                                   bone stillness
                                                       ­   potential energy

a light wave
and a particle.
--Madison, James, "Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments"
--LeMay, Beall, Robblee & Brower, Chemistry: Connections to Our Changing World, Prentice Hall, 2000

www.ronnowpoetry.com
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
You can feel it spinning
                                         fast
the Chinese, Japanese, American and European junk
orbiting at several thousand miles per hour could
                                                           ­                             punch
a hole in your armor, future. Thanksgiving passes, then Christmas.
A nuclear detonation, we absorb that fact. The scientist in us
delays sadness by recording observations. What is is,
sorrow's for tomorrow.

By reducing probabilities to near zero I hope to avoid sorrow.
In yr suburb.
In history when there were many fewer people we still found reason
to cross space, explore, trade and war. Now
                                                             ­                 overpopulation
may not be the problem but food and water shortages
get our attention.
                              I have Korf's fears.
And hear what I want to hear.

Some hear singing, some hear speeches or complaining.
Martin Luther King sang his complaints, dreamed of a brotherly nation
which came to pass, spinning fast, past Thanksgivings, past jailings
into reconnaissance, small wars, drones, renaissance, inventions.
At the border,
                         where the Juaristas fought Maximilian:
Benito Juarez (1806-1872) Zapotec Amerindian who served five terms as president of Mexico. He was the first Mexican leader who did not have a military background and also the first full-blooded indigenous person to lead a country in the western hemisphere in over 300 years. For resisting French occupation, overthrowing the Empire, and restoring the Republic, Juarez is regarded as Mexicoxs greatest and most beloved leader. 

Each soldier chooses what war at what border, or just
                                                            ­                                   shows up
spinning with the planet.
The neighborhood and surrounding nature is orderly.
But always there is implied force, violence holding it together,
                                                       ­                                                       chaos
is contained
kept out of the playground, government buildings, childrenxs games
but lies within
the force maintaining order, a spinning tumor, a gyroscope of
                                                              ­                                                inertia.
The force of the spinning, the speed of the force bring one to one's
      death
seasons, weather, earth.
                                         While the emperor's being beheaded
enduring seeds are discovered and invented, cross-fertilized and bred.
Corn, yams, potatoes, sunflowers, rice.
                                                           ­       Food is life and a good study,
useful discipline
                           daily meditation.
                                                     ­   The fighting man protects the farmer
and the farmer feeds the fighting man.
They elect the governor
                                        who serves the people. Peace out.

Peace and war are transitory manifestations of spinning
electrons, planets.
                               The sun's a nuclear detonation, essential
to spring and planting. Food is life. Seeds endure
if man goes to his daily discipline. If woman is man.
Birth and death
                           together are orderly, the border can be known,
voluntarily. How we live together, by prayer or force,
is our story.

Knowledge
from laboratory to starry corridor keeps us very
                                                            ­                         versed.
Did Juaristas consider the rights of animals not to be eaten?
Not during that spinning.
                                              And perform the history that surrounds us.
All that can be done
is written in the spinning:
"The people of the land, the Indian farmers of North America - like their counterparts in Mesoamerica, the Andean region, and the Amazon - have continuously cultivated maize, beans, squash and other crops for more than five thousand years. One of the salient features of their traditional farming systems is the high degree of biodiversity. These traditional farming systems have emerged over centuries of cultural and biological evolution, and they represent the accumulated experience of indigenous farmers interacting with the environment without access to external inputs, capital or scientific knowledge. In Latin America alone, more than 2.5 million hectares under traditional agriculture in the form of raised fields, polycultures, agroforestry systems and the like document indigenous farmers' successful adaptations to difficult environments."
--Wikipedia,  "Benito Juarez"
-- Altieri , Miguel A., Foreword to Enduring Seeds: Native American Agriculture and Wild Plant Conservation, by Gary Paul Nabhan, The University of Arizona Press, 1989

www.ronnowpoetry.com
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
First person singular prohibited. In order
to be more crow.
War! war! war! war! war!

Then there's that lowland wetland bird
around the stunted red pines crying
Birdy, birdy, birdy, birdy.

Hear the redwing blackbird chirring
Her, her, her... she
as one might expect, Spring.

Words for birds
since they're inaccessible. Aim
binoculars left, right, up, down, missing every time.

At the piano recital
Aaron made the penguins run, run, run, not waddle,
from a hungry polar bear!

Everything passes, even a massacre,
but birds outlast cars
and words like chemical and holocaust.

Woodpecker climbs oak,
Connecticut.
Not one neighbor heard the knocking.

The voice of a pewee
whose nest has fallen out of the tree.
Oh my! Oh me!

What did the wood thrush sing
that summer evening
teaching its young thrush meanings?
www.ronnowpoetry.com
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
Rhodora in winter, capsule like a claw,
remains of the 5-part flower Emerson saw,
gone to seed. Deciduous trees and shrubs
have their own winter beauty and a power
akin to the fittest's survival, self-same
that brought me, musing, here. Large globose buds!
(that dwarf the rose's but not the butternut's)  
distinguish it from other Ericaceae that
surround this inland wetland. The Lord
all claim to worship is not better
than thou. I'm passing through naming you,
your parts, and the autumn elaeagnus who
is your neighbor. Good a walk as it gets
before edible understory herbs sprout.
www.ronnowpoetry.com
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
A year
in which
each day
brings one
tenth inch.
First the
window sills
are covered
then door
jambs. Our
lips are
sealed then
our eyes
shut. Sleep
like this
we've never
known. Will
Spring return?
Unknown. We
care not.
www.ronnowpoetry.com
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
Marines call to say hello,
impress. I'm over 35 but my boys
19. They could go: Hide!

One moment spent tying a shoe,
another dying, gunshot wound or poisoned food.
Events in their mere chronology
                                                      ­ make no sense.
And the details of yr dad's life don't either.
                                                         ­               Late night
quiet cigarette smoker. But next day,
the butts cleaned into the can. Who does that?
Lady in a skirt or overalls rolled up - cigarette smoke.
Now it's yr dad.
                            Yr dad who
                                                 watches for war.

Even if Uncle Sam disbands, dissolves
we the people will still be here and stay involved
with North America. The purple mountains majesty
                           and shining seas
little people, big people, brown, red, and white. Addicted
                           to action movies.
Perhaps there is no choice. One must sit, sitting still
                           as a buddha, sitting bull.
I can imagine myself and all others - drivers, voters, runners -
                           little fetal muscles
at first. Metastasizing. What's it called when the cell
                           at the tip of the *****
or organism, divides, and the ***** grows? It's called
                           ******* a bicycle.

I find I make no sense. Her ****, a practicality to her, is
                           delicious to me
a miraculous sea lettuce or snapdragon. You've heard it before.
                           A moral dilemma
wrapped in robes and silks and odors. Yet, come close,
                           and business beckons
work gets done, life goes on, hair grows in, we go on
                           vacation
the Marine Corps calls, desperate for new fetuses to teach
                           purposeful workmanlike killing
I'll do my own killing, thanks, when violence comes to the
      neighborhood
                           if I've got your back
your back's gotten and if I'm on point, the point's taken.

One world under God invisible with liberty and justice for all who
                           Art in heaven
what the hell's his name.
                                          Nemesis.
        ­                                                  Hysterical.
The small war of an especially inept empire. The world's too big
to swallow as the Krauts and Nips found out. Empire
is self-correcting. Them dark-skinned mustachioed *******
who can't fix their own electricity seem to be kicking our *****
pert good. As did the ***** before them. All to the good. A
good lesson to know and then we all become friends following
the brawl. We apparently cannot skip the fight. It must
be fought, and **** the girls.
www.ronnowpoetry.com
Robert Ronnow Aug 2015
Generally cheerful institutions
school and hospital, The Constitution,
roadways with their yellow stitch lines.

Order on the mountainside, in the city,
the veneer is thin, the people thrifty,
the freedom to associate unlimited.

Smoke the cigarette, sound the subwoofer,
I woof and bay like every other dog, proof
one cannot escape the planet, life's foolproof.

Magic's secret- rabbit, lion- the inner
animus emerges from the hat. One eats magicians,
the other's skewered for dinner.

Thus, happy and sad at once, death a solace
and a fearsome fright. As the dashed lines pass,
confidently, and when necessary, I drive fast.

An afternoon, one hundred years of solitude
for our silver maple. Microscopic magnitudes:
the snake's skin, the fly's wing, the man's mood.
www.ronnowpoetry.com
Next page