EARTH UNDER SIEGE: POETIC REFLECTIONS

The poet possesses a remarkable ability to communicate profound truths through concise and elegant verses. The poems linger in the reader's mind, inviting repeated readings and revealing new layers of meaning with every encounter.GARDEN OF THE GODSThe plains come down from the north: level fertile feminine assuring and biblical: hills low, crooked straight >to end at the magnificent monstrosity of a garden made by the gods >made to erupt from the bowels of earth three hundred millions years ago, breaking through its crust making plain places rough as a monstrous turmoil of violence >You feel it still today looking down into deep gorges from sharp edges of high rocks, facing high wind blowing between low clouds and across layered hills, holding on to parched trees and stepping carefully from the peril of plunging to the bottom where dwell surviving animals and buzzards hovering overhead and >and you think of the natives who deferred to gods as creators of the land and forces of nature, sensibly awed and humbled before >and the fear of early settlers who stopped to stay in docile plains, not daring to venture farther into austere wilderness made not >You know you do not belong here on these high rocks of danger and severe creation of nature except to come and go via modern vehicle and highway, for you are not a survivor like natives who came before and >Jim Hanson is a sociologist and retired Senior Researcher at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale who has taught sociology and community development, and has worked in community and economic development and as a civil rights and anti-war community organizer. He is a lay-ordained Zen Buddhist who lives in the St. Louis area with his wife, Carol. His poetry collections include - Faith Lost and Found by Cyberwit in 2024, Ruminations: Poems on Living and Dying by Cyberwit in 2023, Perspective: Educational Poems on the Humanities and Sciences by Wipf and Stock in 2023, Endless Journey: Poems in Search of Meaning by Spartan Press in 2022, and chapbook Anthropic Musings in 2019. Single poems have appeared in some thirty websites and printings. He is a member of the Illinois State Poetry Society Southern Chapter and St. Louis Poetry Center.