Monday, July 12, 2010

Summer Headlines (Poem)

Summer Headlines

In a season that gives women's names
to summer storms

Cindy Sheehan goes to court,
her crime the crossing of a line

dividing mothers from their sons.
Ten Russians, their sleepers' cover blown,

get swapped for four whose years
behind the bars their faces wear

like stripes re-lashed on prison clothes.
The French regard for scandal

brings tv to Sarkozy, but cake he offers
not where thick-tongued bon mots do.

LeBron free agent takes Miami Heat
and Cleveland decries it foul.

The bulls run their mean streak through Pamplona
while oil chews its path through marsh

to shore, relentless, like the stream
of Srebrenica's green-covered coffins

borne 60,000 strong to Potocari,
Mladic the general a fugitive still.

Cloud computing's future's hazy,
Polanski's the Swiss assured. Spain beats

Netherlands in South Africa and scores
fall in Nairobi, twin blasts rocking

out in World Cup mischief. Elsewhere,
one hundred eleven naked people

wearing nothing but some sun screen
skinny dip their way into a record book

and a woman in Maine gets a class ring
back after twenty-eight years. Meanwhile,

six months since January and counting,
Haiti's homeless live and eat and sleep in streets,

like the oily pelican chicks on island rookeries,
waiting for the clean-up.

© 2010 Maureen E. Doallas. All Rights Reserved.
________________________

I wrote this poem for the Tuesday, July 13, Blog Carnival sponsored by Bridget Chumbley at One Word at a Time and Peter Pollock of Rediscovering the Church.

The Blog Carnival is a biweekly online event open to anyone. Participants write on a one-word prompt or topic. This week's one word is "summer".

At Bridget's place you'll find a list of links to all of the contributions, which are posted throughout Tuesday and often through to the end of the week.

The Blog Carnival's FaceBook page is here.

The prompt for the next Blog Carnival, on July 27, is "ego".

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

perfect.

Nithin RS said...

Amazing. You put together so many issues in one poem.

Louise Gallagher said...

I am humbled.

You've recapped a summer of strife and joy and woe and jubilation so perfectly!

Glynn said...

Another good one, Maureen. I'm in awe.

katdish said...

Thoroughly more enjoyable than reading the headlines, and not nearly as depressing. Very nice summary. Thanks.

Kathleen Overby said...

Wow X brilliant. Stuffed. Packed. Concentrated.

Rebecca said...

Amazing how you threaded all of those headlines into such a beautiful tale...wonderful.

Water Shack Lady said...

Beautiful stream of thoughts so well connected. You amaze me more each time.

Anonymous said...

Wow! I don't know what else to say!

Duane Scott said...

Loved this poem! It brought back a lot of memories as I remember most of these happenings.

jasonS said...

What a world we live in. Interesting to note what have been the bigger stories and what are more like footnotes. Not a pretty picture, I'm afraid. Thanks Maureen.

Anonymous said...

What a world this is! Someone mentioned the other day that the oil spill should get a fraction of the media that Lindsey Lohan has received. Crazy!

Thanks for a wonderful poem, Maureen.