Get dressed

a poem about second chances

Photo by Jossuha Théophile

Greetings to all you beautiful substackers and many thanks for dropping by here to read. I’ve enjoyed sharing a few poems lately from a collection I’ve been slowly refining and plan to keep that up between writing and revising the essay-type reflections I usually share here. I hope you’ve enjoyed the poems too, and I appreciate the comments I’ve received from some of you.

I started madbird a year and a half ago to serve as a place where I could collect my thoughts and experiment with the essay style in an attempt to eventually write a [hopefully] decent collection of essays on nature connection in the digital age. I was also seeking (and to some degree have found) an online writing community. While I have been more present here at certain times than others, I have found substack to be an overall beneficial experience. As I seek to gradually disconnect from other social media platforms, I hope to be more present here in the coming months. I have truly loved some of your writing and am grateful for the good connections I’ve made here. Thank you.

Since I have a little experience with self-publishing, I have decided to create a physical copy of some of the madbird essays from over the past year and a half. I haven’t shared many new essays over the past few months because I’ve been working on revising that little book, which I call Madbird Reader Vol 1. Some of those essays I basically re-wrote, and I hope all of this is leading me toward better and better versions of the essays that I would eventually like to publish with a “real” publisher. It is all a process, and I’m learning to trust the path I’m on. Substack has been an important part of that path for me. When the little madbird book does emerge, if you would like a copy, please let me know. I’d love to send you a free one.

Thanks again for reading, my friends. Now on to some poetry. I have been so grateful to have poetry in my life lately. God bless. Get dressed.

Get dressed

All of us embattled hearts longing for justice

All the prompt heads awakening to alarms

meeting slothfulness with interminable rage

myself with money and washed car

wishing I lived under a bridge in canvas tent

on a five-gallon bucket by the river’s edge

scraping scales from brim bodies

all the leaves falling in their places

watching ephemeral streams swell in spring

and bluebirds taking mates

and young ones get their wings

An angry high school history teacher

rebukes airy teens

with holes in jeans

“You’ll never make it in college”

Really?
The professor, stoned, arrives late

in unkempt beard and busted flops

tosses keys down on the table

sips coffee, his salvation

“Any comments on the reading?

No?”
Beauty turns and returns

among ingrates

most people thirst for consequence

having been offered one, two

endless chances

to be reborn

while the earth waits for us to see

that although problems subsist

there are no problems

The first becomes last, the town

washes away, bridges collapse,

the corrupt at heart is sworn in

God whispers, get dressed

the stage is set