History

by Kevin Farnham (March 2025)

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History
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__History’s a concept to which all minds cling:
A story successive ages overlay,
Collective fancy we cite in good faith,
Malleable fantasy butchered by kings.
History’s illusion’s beyond Plato’s Cave:
Implausibly ciphering, we misconstrue.
History’s mystery is forged ever anew.
History’s my dream: words splayed upon a grave.
__Books say it’s real (though engraved words bleed);
Books (like memories) manifest incarnate creed
(My own gilded story). When words decay
(They’re history themselves) where breathes the past?
We peer through clouds at fossilizing glass
Awash with paling stars. History lives today.
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The Game of Life
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__Computing’s dawn: I code the Game of Life.
Playing detached God, I invent a crude
Physics, then launch a cosmic certitude:
Pixels portraying synergies and strife.
Sometimes the seeding makes conditions rife
For fractured growth toward stable multitude;
Or they divide and die in solitude.
Of course, I know it’s just a game, not life.
__It’s different now: gaming’s total immersion,
Attention riveted by helmet pixel
Power grids that breed infatuation.
Sensory deprivation’s called criminal;
But now for fun we overwrite perception
(Nature’s clue) with programmed abdication.
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Close of Day’s Work
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__Immersed in Nature’s effluence, she flits
From flower to flower, water jug in hand,
Fostering varied milkweeds (she commits
Her hands and zeal, resuscitates the land).
Three monarchs sip on tipping sunburst zinnias.
She props the stems with rocks (I’ll make a stake
Tomorrow), scrutinizes (straight now? Almost),
Surveys her dominion as daylight fades.
_I watch through Queen Anne’s Lace and goldenrod,
Digging more worms than sad potatoes (bad
Crop: victim of the late May killer frost).
Looking down field, she calls to me. “I’m here!”
I wave. She sees: “I’m done.” I dig one last
Potato, take the basket, walk to greet her.
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Table of Contents

Kevin Farnham has been published in The Lyric Magazine and by The Society of Classical Poets. You can find his 2023 book, Twelve Sonnets: A Defense of Spirit, here.

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