“Just Do It,” “Warning” and “Life Dunes”

In Issue 29 by Russell Willis

Just do it

Just Do It

No matter what the it

it often starts small, unannounced

undetected or unappreciated

It starts to grow or change in

some way, pushed or pulled by us

or self-induced

or dies or hides, sometimes to be

found, or not

There comes a time we

stop pushing or pulling and

embrace it, or fight it, or try

to ignore it

or someone else does

with or without us

and this is how it becomes

that life we lived, or not

Warning

Without warning

Futures emerge

Unbidden

Yet triggered

By agents unaware of

Havoc unleashed

Order imposed

Potential spawned

Opportunity missed

Fact misconstrued or simply ignored

Expediency coddled

Curiosity mistrusted

Doubt ignored

Insight darkened by lack of faith

That the future is created.

Or, thinking they are the authors

Of their destinies,

Destined to blunder through time

Minds and hearts

Numbed by fear

Blinded by hate

Lost to loneliness

Blunted by addiction

Overwhelmed by the power of those

Who mistrust the other

Certainty substituted for doubt

Surrendering self

Subsumed by tribal consciousness

Future predestined

Hope traded for

Promised security.

Enter the dreamer

Unencumbered by hopelessness

Still subject to fear

Intrigued by history’s lessons to learn

Seduced by possibility’s siren songs

Replete with redemption

Tangled with promise

Too good to be true

Too true to abandon

Grounded in the real

Nurtured by the imagined

Whispering hope while being shouted down

Then screaming truth to power

Spurred by doubts unleashed

All the while adding insult to injury

Hurling intolerance at the intolerant

The timid beware

As the meek inherit the mess

Firing a warning shot across the bow;

Damn the future,

Full speed ahead!

Life Dunes

grass and sand buffer sea from land

unless, until neglect or storm breach or strangle

years mass between past and new

offering memories a time to die or flourish

silence gathers after thoughtlessness

numbing pain, inviting notice

commonplace cushions the new

comforts the unforeseen

About the Author

Russell Willis

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Russell Willis emerged as a poet in 2019 with the publication of three poems in The Write Launch. Since then, he has published poetry in over thirty online and print journals and twenty print anthologies. He won the Sapphire Prize in Poetry in the 2022 Jewels in the Queen’s Crown Contest (Sweetycat Press). Russell grew up in and around Texas (USA) and was vocationally scattered as an engineer, ethicist, college/university teacher and administrator, and Internet education entrepreneur and pastor throughout the Southwest and Great Plains, finally settling in Vermont with his wife, Dawn.

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