The Tangled Branch Discussion Forums

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Noting The Passing of Nelson Mandela

We make our lives on the northern prairie.
We say we are Christian, though most of us
are Lutherans, still clustering in immigrant communities,
150 years expanding past the last
of the Indian wars of extermination.

A US flag hangs outside our three-room Post Office,
next to the town’s one café. The flag is dipped,
to half-mast, like a tip of the cap toward
the Municipal Liquor Store across the street.

Snow dust is finger drifting. It is three below.
None of us have ever been to Cape Town.

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[minor edit]

This is so real and yet also almost mythical. It is an america i can identify and identify with though i have never been there. My favourite kind. There is a real sense of humanity especially in that moving last line. Excellent use of apparently minor detail to lift the poem to another level. Love it

Some events affect (almost) everyone.
I'm conflicted.
On one hand I read a town responding to the death, even though it's not relevant to them.
On the other hand, I see one town official dropping the flag to half mast while the rest think 'Meh'
It works on both levels for me.
Like this very much.
 

Homesick Tracy?

So Lutheranism doesn't quite qualify as Christianity? Come to think of it, what does? The contrast between the Indian wars on the very land upon which the town was founded and acknowledgement of Mandela halfway around the world is a wonderful example of the paradoxes with which we live. Would you call this a case of cognitive dissonance? Or the beam in their eye and the mote in our own? All different points raised in this loaded piece. Wonderful poem. 

Crews of neighbors on the western edge are running around digging each other out. Bless them.

Not sure I got all of this, I'm not from America, but the lines

The flag is dipped,
to half-mast, like a tip of the cap toward
the Municipal Liquor Store across the street.

are quite well done. Humor in poetry isn't easy. At least for me it isn't.

Thanks Ismael, for reading and commenting. Good to see you on the boards.

Indar - not so homesick, but I am still finding my MN experience to be fertile background for writing.

A friend said that Pope Francis is without doubt the foremost spiritual leader of his lifetime, but he wasn’t sure that he was Catholic. That is the spirit in which I differentiate Lutherans and Christians. Still.

I think it would have been a better image for the half-masted flag to be flying somewhere on the Res. It may have helped to clarify the theme. Thanks for your take - always a treat.

Colm - I like your readings of this. There is the third alternative of course - a genuine show of respect without a clue as to who he really was, how he fit into their history, and where the parallels might be drawn. Glad you like this.

Dave - You reinforce the idea that concrete details bring strength to a poem, texture, context, and hopefully a clearer sense of meaning.

Thanks all.

Cheers.

T

That last couplet is one of the best poem endings I've seen in a while. It makes the poem for me.

Thanks, Hugh, for the the very kind words.

Cheers.

T