To me, a poem is a sermon, meant to start a whisper slow and lowly, just above the congregation’s expectant murmur pepper with a few harsh backhands, gaps, and nervous coughs.
In a good sermon you never really know what to expect.
That’s why you’re nervous a little.
Understandable.
And that’s just the beginning.
In the right hands and the right throat the hum can grow, slowly, moving right past the early adopters and tugging on a few of the usual holdouts. It’s not too much work because they’re pretending either way. They’re leasable.
With the increased volume the hum starts to get to you physically. The energy is building; you know it. You recognize the signs. They may call it the Almighty something or other, but it’s something you already know. What you can possibly KNOW is human sized. Your brain can’t even comprehend how much larger the ASO (that’s Almighty Something-or-Other, you remember, dearly beloved?) is. Never mind your phonetic chuckles there. You get the point.
Ok. So maybe your foot starts tapping or you start nodding your head to the meter of the speech, whatever you think it is. No judgment on your rhythm skills.
Moving on.
From the hum it grows into a conversation. The flow goes back and forth, poet to audience, preacher to congregation, each moving the other to greater eloquence and determination, if not to achieve the goal of their point, to achieve the point nonetheless.
Needless to say at this point it’s a little louder up in here.
But sooner or later, through a series of ever climbing and falling peaks and valleys, these waves upon the ocean that represent our seemingly independent but really quite unequivocally connected ocean, these waves crest.
And break, upon the shore, like tears: of passion, grief, mourning, pain, sorrow, joy, heartbreak, pleasure, surprise.
Now you’ll need to eat something.
That’s what buffets are for.
© 2026, John Litzenberg. All rights reserved.
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