Elemental Vision: a verse reaction

Finding no particular inspiration in any of today's specific news, events, or anniversaries, I retreated into a poetic meditation on the general tenor of my current frame of mind.

Recently, I've been pondering a vague image of an individual's small hands trying to hold back the gushing force of the societal changes raining down on us. The following poem took its first halting steps from that motif, but as with everything I write, it soon found its own stride and the lines flowed in a much different direction than I anticipated.

I'm not quite sure if I completely understand or fully approve its form and content, but as my good friend George Kokines says about his paintings, I've gotten to the point where I accept it.

Elemental Vision
By Francis Scudellari

I. Water
Damned, us, with clutched hands
Prayed on, pushed against
The tidal flood's flow,
Waves surging, drenching,
Overwhelming old
Truths once tightly clasped

II. Earth
Buried, accustomed
To/o neat darkness laid
Lying still, disturbed
Ground quaking, trembling,
Found(n)ations shifting,
Death's pride uncov'ring

III. Air
Sheltered, shut in, out
Of changing winds, back
Turning over, gales
Swirling, toppling, gusts
Razing battlements
Built up against hope

IV. Fire
Heaped, under bitter,
Cold black ash, waiting
Embers igniting,
Lit, new life sparking,
Blazing imagined
Paths through minds, fields cleared

V. Void
Freed, spirit buoyed
Passions un-Earthed, -tilled
Vision unclouded
Enflamed, to create
Chaos re-stored, our
Possible re-berthed

(Graphic Details: Remnants of Kepler's Supernova (en:SN 1604). This image has been constructed of images from NASA's en:Spitzer space telescope, Hubble Space Telescope, and en:Chandra X-ray Observatory.)