Withering Fall

A walk on the wild side

John Adams kept a revealing diary

Second President of the USA

The Designer of the American Constitution

The nagging New England voice

Against British imperialism

Who even defended the British troops

English English English

How did that become

British?

Who did the Boston Massacre

You don’t have to look up God

To find the Designer

Throughout his long life

Johannes Kepler no diary

In his relatively short existence on earth

But among his scientific reflections

So astonishing

He included his reflections on the human

On himself

Reading them

A few years ago I was reprimanded by the human

The same exorcism as in Adams’s diary

Exorcism of the human

Although I didn’t know about Adams then

When I read Kepler

Not so much exorcism

As wonderment of the power of the human mind

And grief at its frailties

Your personal failure

And it’s like in the World Series

Of Baseball

The Ultimate Sport

It’s always the individual and luck

Kepler hearing the music of the planets

Which everyone else claims to be deaf to

You have to be deaf to hear the planets

Not to go into Adams or Kepler

Or even Kepler’s mother

Accused of witchcraft

Who he defended for five long years

Adams’s presidency a disaster

Of which

He spends the last seven months reading

Frederick the Great

Which I will explain someday

Shut up! he explained

I hate it when I do nothing all day

Come up with less

And it’s only an attempt

At bad poetry

To finish the day

[Editor’s note: Are fallen leaves bad poetry?]