Thoughts & Prayers

By Jane Rosenberg LaForge

They are offered in rote
as if the supply is bottomless;
like abstractions, inaction
and aesthetics; they could
be meaningless or mean
anything, so long as they
are not so sustaining as
steak & lobster for the
impoverished; more like
succotash & wilted lettuce.

Maybe they’re a law firm
the kind advertised on television
with a jingle and 1-800 number
children can’t help learning
before their alphabet; so much so
they’ve become a part of the literacy process!
A tentative, baby step toward
discerning cliché from idiom
because language: it’s a young
person’s business now, if they can
survive being a soft target.

Or perhaps it’s becoming part
of the international ergot, like a traffic sign
or the symbol for “no,” or a name
we give to conglomerates selling
mattresses or men’s clothing:
instant recognition for the product
and everyone knows just where to go
to find the best discounts.

For this year, I was thinking
they might make a particularly
poignant salutation for the season,
what with the war on Christmas
always burgeoning, so coming to you
on a greeting card soon, from a raft
of similar partnerships: O.F. Mossberg
& Sons, Heckler & Koch,
and Clint Eastwood’s truly evergreen
friends, Smith & Wesson.

Or they might be best employed
as a broadcast sign-off;
not so much like Walter Cronkite’s
“& that’s the way it is,” if he were
working on a Wednesday, the 14th of February, 2018;
but as his successor attempted
for five days no one remembers
except for the derision and embarrassment:
“Courage,” was all he said
as if looking into the future,
because we’re going to need a lot more of it.

Jane Rosenberg LaForge is the author of Daphne and Her Discontents, a full-length collection of poems from Ravenna Press; and the forthcoming novel, The Hawkman: A Fairy Tale of the Great War, from Amberjack Publishing. For more information, visit jane-rosenberg-laforge.com. and follow her on Twitter, @JaneRLaForge.

Image credit: An anonymous internet find.