Hello my friends,

Up to now you would have found my poetry only in the “Notes” timeline of the Substack app. But this poem has ended up being very dear to me, and I’ve decided to share it with all of my subscribers.

Enjoy.

~Jack

Four score a circle

Four score a circle,With blackest charcoal breast,He’s aching for the chaos-storm's caress.

Rooted, the sapling criesFor autumn's kiss, yearningFor destruction's gentleness.

But he is not the tree.

In fair Bermuda,A castle crumbles to the sea,Weathered stones carvedBy the ocean's entropy.

But he is not the tree.

The prophet saw wheelsWithin wheels within wheels.You tried to trap a cycloneIn a forty ounce bottle,But it's full to bursting.

But he is not—

He’ll have another circle, sir,The same size as the first.Twine them like the hands of time,Forty years traversed.

Did you see Bermuda in the fall?The petrels are gone,Night-heron and mourning doveFled from the roiling of the calm.

Forty years a sapling grown,Now forty more to rage and roam.He shed his bark, unfurled his leaves,No longer bound by roots and eaves.

HE IS NOT—

No obelisk now stands,There is no castle wall.He’s left the forest,And let the saplings fall.

In unyielding tempests,And in the raging sea, In the wheeling wheeling reeling cyclone,And ocean’s entropy.

That’s where you’ll find him.

He is not the calm you seek,He’s not the rooted tree.

The storm, you see—

The storm is he.

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