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# Extremes
- URL: https://www.andyposner.org/extremes/
- Published: 2025-11-23T18:12:17.000Z
- Updated: 2026-07-18T20:57:15.000Z
- Description: A poem must be as short as the poet’s life or millennia longer: there is no in-between. Either it dies with you or lives on, this strife, and if you conclude I’m given to extremes
- Author: Andy
- Tags: poetry, #Migrated-1784090317409, #wp, #wp-post, #Import 2026-07-15 04:39

A poem must be as short as the poet’s life  
or millennia longer: there is no in-between.  
Either it dies with you or lives on, this strife,  
and if you conclude I’m given to extremes

I won’t object: give me not the oak’s kind shade  
but a Sonoran desert sun’s unrelenting rage.  
O, what use have I for the confused serenade  
of an understudy pacing to and fro backstage?—

I demand the raised curtain, the crowd, the lights!  
The lonely hours of writing and rehearsal I abhor;  
and as when the Swainson’s Hawk on my arm alights  
and speaks not of its peregrinations or the wars

it waged to arrive here, I too long to arrive,  
uncomplaining, on perfection’s placid shore;  
only when I search time’s well-worn archive  
for unimpeded solace do I find that final door

I can’t see beyond. Not that this blindness scares  
me: I reach for the slippery handle as one does a chart  
of the stars. Rather, I note the pastor putting on airs,  
the undertaker’s greed, and believe I alone stand apart.