When the world seems less predictable.....

As a teenager predictability and stability had pretty negative connotations that mostly translated into boring with a capital 'B'.  My friends and I assumed that change would always mean improvement. Life lessons learned have supplied plenty of evidence that although nothing really stays the same, change, in and of itself, doesn't necessarily forbode change for the better. 
There is a quiet predicability in the rhythms of seasons, forests, and gardens that in the current social and political atmosphere of rampant unpredictability, feels far from boring and I find myself wanting to seek it out more and more frequently.  My poem published in issue #4 of Counterflow Magazine speaks to that push and pull of change and stability.

Owing great sensitivity to small changes              by Carla Stein 
​
“…where nothing
will grow lie
cinders
in which shine
the broken
pieces of a green
bottle”                            from Between Walls, William Carlos Williams 

the Omnishambles breaks loose
uproar and commotion ensue

a disordered three-ring circus
chaos, turmoil, a state of mayhem

complete with free-for-all
snake pit madness in the region

hell, it’s bedlam --
pandemonium

so much disarray
everything out of order 

a frenzied snowstorm
a hurly-burly maelstrom 

its hue and cry upheaval
a muddled riot

a babel-filled car crash
so unpredictable as to appear random

within that nest of lawlessness
that hullabaloo of tumult

a red cedar sprouts
sends ruby tendrils
​into fire-blackened earth