Contextualizing, or Neither Here nor There

To “hate those who hate You” —

or you —

(rather than those who may be

       out and out down on me)

seems a moral necessity

encompassed in

       “loving our enemies.”

                                Out here

there’s an unconscious undertone

of fond contempt, at best,

when anyone adverts to what

once mattered so much

to other shapers of

style, in opinion. Here

cuttings from the hothouses

(where yesterday’s flowers of the field are

coaxed to limp survival)

are cherished as new rank

growth, for general benefit out here

— without embarrassment

of wormy soil, or festering, or

composting at the end perhaps.

                                   Inside

there comes sick longing to be out from under

shelter in the bald day,

even to wither there.

                                   Out here

with hate, loving, it can too soon

begin to seem

cool, that “shadow of turning.”

                                   Inside

it’s harder still to sidestep

minimal, chilling compromises —

too little respecting, or

too defensive about our

amazing range of individualities

under the one rubric that matters.