A Borrowed Poem

With his kind permission, please find below a poem written by Lee McCormack, a hermit living in the dank and moldy primal forests of Martha’s Vineyard. Writing poetry for 55 years, he is the first ever Martha’s Vineyard Poet Laureate in the island’s history, nominated from 162 members of the MV Poetry Society. He is also a member of the Cleaveland House Poets.

Late For the Dance?

Can you believe the sense of shame, the ash
falling over us from a discolored atmosphere,
all that's left of plants and animals, everything
we have begotten? Did it occur that somewhere
in the past this was foretold by the heads and skins
hanging in the halls of museums and other public
places, as if, turned inside out we hung ourselves out
to be dried on opaque walls of unconscious humanity?

Oh, there was no doubt we had missed the mark
and somehow failed to heed the warnings, our time
spent seeking, not recovery or truth from history,
but simple physical pleasure? And yet even weeks
in the country can not completely dispel or erase
the lingering bad taste of something beneath this
surface that is decayed. Perhaps a lapse of judgment
left us grudgingly avoiding the planetary shift

from life to its significant abbreviation,
for, like the body, all civilizations rise and fall.
It is all in motion, nothing is static, nothing ever still. . .
Even in our aberrations, we remain wholly unsure
of this Nature, its Earth, and the cycles rearranging
all matter it is made of, always believing human will
can mutate its deadly transformation and reverse the weather.
If you don't know where the dance originated, you cannot dance.

       ~ Lee McCormick, February 20, 2016



Please find more of his work at his Facebook Page, here