The Los Alamos Kettles Calling the Abbot’s Pots Black

More like medieval monks we move beyond

That trap, “the wide world,” since that world is now

Too wide, the world wide web around.  Most fond

And unsuspecting people choose to bow

To this new cosmos, but we travel back

To sonnets and to villanelles and such

Like things.  We aren’t the free verse claque

Accusing us of being out of touch.

We meditate alone in monkish cells,

Their rhyming stanzas and their rhythmed space,

But in those rooms our wider vision swells.

We step out holinesses which we pace.

  Our tiny compact fission/fusion psalms

    Result in banished John on Patmos bombs.

   ~ Phillip Whidden