By: Alita Pirkopf
To James Thomson
We held all our lives
views we didn’t exactly think out,
couldn’t even grasp. Or they held us—
we, I speak of myself,
who never entered the fray, the field—
science, the sky and cell, the atom.
But, inadvertently, we replicated
the certain inquisitors,
hanging onto our society’s rules,
adhering to its rhythms, rhymes,
dancing to its tunes.
Our truths took hold
with German shepherd teeth.
And now we have to wonder.
Years after graduating from Middlebury College, Alita Pirkopf received a master’s degree in English literature from the University of Denver. Later she enrolled in a poetry seminar at the University of Denver taught by Bin Ramke. Poetry became a long-term focus and obsession.Alita’s poem “Roadkill” has been nominated for the Sundress Publications 2021 Best of the Net awards. Other poems of hers have appeared or are forthcoming in The Alembic, Caduceus, Cimarron Review, The Courtship of Winds, El Portal, Harpur Palate, The Rail, Stonecoast Review, and Wrath-Bearing Tree, as well as in other journals.