Perfectly configured for a planet never come

Here's another reading from my poetry collection "Night Song for Cigar-Box Banjo" a piece with more conventional (that is, rhyming) form than usual for me - and a modern romantic take on some very old human themes.

With so many things at once feeling undermined, so many crises and fears, it feels like we don't talk about culture the way we used to - as a great and important quality for society in general.

The longer you live, the more you see the fragility of possibility, and also the extraordinary resilience of hope. Even when times aren't so encouraging, creators keep showing up with courage and heart, trying their best for all of us.

But even less talked about, is that part of having a broad and diverse culture which allows for freedom and experiment is that not everything works - not even everything well intended and worthwhile. Even with every other factor lined up just so, luck too must enter - it is in fact the enabling charm (situationally favourable collapsing of the eigenstate?)

This does not make the unlucky any less worthwhile sincere or helpful, just unlucky.

And in a strange way, it sometimes makes their foredoomed and heartfelt efforts quite bittersweet and even beautiful.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯