When Still Means Free
—upon watching the movie Melania
When someone causes one to smile,
With radiance mild, and without guile,
And makes demonics far to flee,
Amid such times when still means free,
Without commotion, but with nerve,
No fret or gust, yet still with verve,
She’s cultivated well to serve
Hellish times that crave reserve.
Alec Ream is a writer living in Virginia. His poetic work and creative fiction have been widely published. A member of the Demosthenian Literary Society at UGA, he wrote on Lookout Mountain, and continued to write, lecture and work for Delta Kappa Epsilon HQ. He was first published reading to the pledge class of Michigan DKE, in Ann Arbor in 2008. Recently, his poem Green Fire was read at the Washington Literary Society & Debating Union at UVA.
Words well chosen, Alec, and leading to the smile you mention in your first line. I like the conundrum of the opposite-seeming “still” and “free” in the title and fourth line. And there’s another one in the gently welcome relief of the concluding verse. Nice work!
Thanks Margaret – awful glad it made you smile; we could all use one more often. The recurring “still” was intentional, I see it landed well – appreciate you saying so. Jesus told the sea, “Peace! Be still!” My equation of Still and Free’s indebted. Also, Jessica Tandy said “Be still!” in Driving Miss Daisy.
Alec, this is an apt and fitting work for the presence of such a beautiful first lady. Well said and well received.
Thanks Col Roy – the President’s in the Francophile register of American Presidential personalities: he is not dull – more like Thomas Jefferson. Our President’s wife carries herself in the classic French side of our national aesthetic heritage. Now, my mother won a Georgia beauty contest in the 1950s, and then she had to go marry a 1951 Daytona Beach lifeguard who became President of the Cotillion. All that to say this poem occurred to me without much effort; fairly seamless to their influence.