1 Poem by Lowell Jaeger

                   
The Madman

Returning to the home planet
was my choice.  Maybe
not a good one.  Just curious
to see if things had changed.

I’d sailed off long ago,
after one last broadcast
of the evening news too many.
All the ranting madmen,

the bickering nonsense
of self-serving near-sighted nitwits.
While I roamed the rolling meadows
of deep space, hummed along

in the starlit black.  Heart-sick
with joy to be less than a spec
in the churning galaxies of the big
machine.  Our lives are worth less,

after all, than the breath of a snowflake.
The doctors frown, scratch notes
when I explain.  They are terrified
of my message, and have locked me away,

they say, for protection.


Bionote

As founding editor of Many Voices Press, Lowell Jaeger compiled Poems Across the Big Sky, an anthology of Montana poets, and  New Poets of the American West, an anthology of poets from 11 Western states.  His third collection of poems, Suddenly Out of a Long Sleep (Arctos Press) was published in 2009 and was a finalist for the Paterson Award.  His fourth collection, WE, (Main Street Rag Press) was published in 2010.  He is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Montana Arts Council and winner of the Grolier Poetry Peace Prize. Most recently Jaeger was awarded the Montana Governor’s Humanities Award for his work in promoting thoughtful civic discourse.