“The World Swings Towards its Opposite”
Often we’re made by what we lack.
White stands out better against black.
A child’s hand against your hand
often helps you understand
how prepared the human zoo
is to go on without you.
The world keeps balancing its act,
although we often rue the fact.
A child is born? Another must
make room by turning back to dust.
And every time we try to change this,
nature steps in to rearrange us.
Pestilence, earthquake and flood
offset new birth by spilling blood.
Ebola, aids, dengue, the flu
are, alas, only a few
of nature’s horrors that balance joys.
Cold and hot and girls and boys,
feast and famine, rain and shine,
mountain, valley, fresh water, brine––
contrast is what defines our world.
Every “knit one” must be pearled.
The truth in this election year
is one that I have come to fear,
for just as prejudice seemed cured,
our world has turned back to absurd.
Obamacare may be replaced
with a plan that’s more debased.
Hatred and misogyny
may be the next thing that will be
inflicted upon our brave world
that reels under each new ill hurled
before cycling back to light,
healing from each horrid blight.
Who seeks to “Trump” our earthly hand,
is one hand closer to being canned!
“. . . when anything reaches its maximum potential, it turns toward its opposite.”
–(translation of a principle stated in the i ching.)
If you want tohttps://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/contrast/
lifelessons - a blog by Judy Dykstra-Brown 
Your poem is wonderful – it goes from micro to macro so gracefully. AND it rhymes, which is so refreshing. 🙂
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Thanks, Petitewise! Yes, I am sort of stuck in rhyme for the past two years. It may be a neurological problem of some sort! ;o)
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It’s a great problem to have! I have trouble rhyming poems, so I usually end up doing freestyle.
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Well, I think sometimes freestyle sounds more sincere as rhyme is a contrivance, after all. I just like the challenge and rhyming comes so naturally to me that I decided to just go with it for awhile. My folks read Dr Seuss to me and I think my poetry many times falls into his patterns. My mother and I loved writing funny poems together and so that tendency just popped up again while writing children’s poems twenty five years ago, then re-emerged three years ago when I started doing NaPoWriMo. By the end of the second April of writing a poem a day, I was hooked and decided to continue to do so.
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I don’t think it feels contrived at all! In fact, I feel quite the same way about freestyle sometimes, depending on how it’s done. I’ve seen some rather awkward attempts at it. But then again, who am I to talk, I’ve probably not been quite so graceful with freestyle poems at times! ^,^”
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I always think of it as nature fighting back. If we don’t listen, she gets pissed off and we get clobbered. Or maybe I’m putting too much sentience into it.
I like that you can do it all and make it rhyme, too 🙂
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That what I’m afraid of. Four more years of insanity at least…
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A beautiful, philosophical poem, which goes from the abstract to the concrete effortlessly.
Love these lines:
“Hatred and misogyny
may be the next thing that will be
inflicted upon our brave world
that reels under each new ill hurled
before cycling back to light,
healing from each horrid blight.”
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We keep hoping that is true…
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