John Tessitore
International Relations
February 12, 2025
A brisk walk on a brick run, leveled, gauged, plumbed, straightened.
The city scraped to bone but slush hides in the mortar, so we slide
with every step. This is experience, learning to be sure-footed after
a storm. This is education. From a fall we grasp the duty of belief:
No choice but to trust our feet. How do we carry on without faith?
How freeing to visit a work-in-progress, a plein-air library of people
at peace. So picturesque to pass the earnest students, their mentors,
overhear the hedged predictions of post-docs, the yes-buts leaning
to truth, reason and moderation behind every considered opinion.
Men with investments speak loudest everywhere. Here, some listen.
How warm the bistro, pleasant the greetings, rich the conversation:
experts on Ukraine discussing limited options against the remaining
opportunities, sharing what knowledge they can, hinting at secrets,
following rules of civil discourse. Self-criticism comes first. We do
our duty: believe in process, parse competing interests, predict pain.
“What happens if we’re wrong?” I ask myself, as I dip a madeleine.
John Tessitore has been a journalist, editor, and biographer. He has taught history and literature at colleges around Boston, managed national policy studies on education and civil justice, and directs a language-education association. He serves as Co-Editor Across the Pond for The Wee Sparrow Poetry Press. His poems have appeared in a variety of books and journals. He has published several volumes of poetry, a novella, and hosts a poetry podcast, Be True, available on all major podcast platforms.
Substack: @johntessitore
Instagram: @jtessitorewriter1
Blue Sky: @jtessitore.bsky.social
Banner Art:
from The Old Excuses are Not Real Life, David Dodd Lee, 2020
