First, Do No Harm | Bartholomew Barker, Poet

All the world’s in pain.
The summers are stifling.
Wildfires roam the forests.

And this is just what we’ve done
to our climate. I try not to think
about what we do to each other.

So, let me bind your wounds.
Share this morsel of food.
Take a sip from my water bottle.

And take solace in the fact
that soft rains will come,
the fever will break,

and the Earth will be green once again.

Did a three-hour shift of poetry-on-demand in Raleigh this afternoon at a funky little clothing shop/bar. My poetry partner, Anna Weaver, and I wrote 18 poems, all told, and we did some pretty good work. Several Mother poems, a couple of cat poems and the more interesting random prompts from our customers. The poem above was written to the prompt “No Harm. Solace.” This is not exactly what I sold, it’s recreated from memory and improved (I hope) by taking longer than five minutes to compose and revise.

About Bartholomew Barker

Bartholomew Barker is an organizer of Living Poetry, a collection of poets in the Triangle region of North Carolina where he has hosted a monthly feedback workshop for more than decade. His first poetry collection, Wednesday Night Regular, written in and about strip clubs, was published in 2013. His second, Milkshakes and Chilidogs, a chapbook of food inspired poetry was served in 2017. He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2021. Born and raised in Ohio, studied in Chicago, he worked in Connecticut for nearly twenty years before moving to Hillsborough where he lives and writes poetry.

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