To my comment box (and the people who use it)
Your presence rains on my isolation.
Your encouragement stimulates growth.
Your dissent rakes through hard-baked thinking.
Your creativity fertilizes understanding.
Your logic stakes rambling intuition.
Your new paradigm hybrids my viewpoint.
Though I must fence you against the weeds of spam
and prune vulgarity, meanness
with word verification and moderation
I would never root you out
for the sunshine of your humour
the nurture of your kindness, wisdom and wit
yield a harvest of friendship and community.
© 2011 by Violet Nesdoly
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This poem is submitted in response to “Writing Poems in Your Own Back Yard” – a challenge by Marcus Goodyear on Books and Culture – a Christian Review to:
“Write a poem about cultivation. When I talk about cultivation, I mean agriculture but also creativity and culture itself. I am talking about the little place in your world where you have been given a small plot to grow new things and add to the beauty of God’s world.”
Violet Nesdoly 
Well-done, Violet! Both fun and wise.
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Fun! I like that maybe I am a dandelion. 🙂
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Thanks so much, Maureen and L.L. I’ve read both of your poems for this challenge — so good.
L.L. – you wrote a sestina, I believe. Sestinas impress the socks off me– as do your well-written Shadorma(s), Maureen.
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Violet,
I’m always in awe of your incredible wit and creativity. Whenever I treat myself and buy a coffee drink, I always remember the beat of:
“I feel the press
I need the perc
I have the grounds
and think I’ve urned
a dark-roast brew
and now will break
with you and cake.”
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Connie, thank you so much!! (No wonder I’m ode-ing the lowly comment box with people like you depositing encouragement in mine:)
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I don’t think I’ve ever seen an ode to the comment box before! I always think of odes as elegaic poems written to people or objects that can’t respond. Yet the comment box does respond in a way. In fact, in leaving a comment here, I almost make myself part of the poem’s focus.
As for the poem itself, I like how you claim the language of social media for poetry in these lines:
I must fence you against the weeds of spam
and prune vulgarity, meanness
with word verification and moderation
Thank you for sharing your poetry with Books and Culture.
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