I’m coming in late with June’s poem. This Wordsworth sonnet is appealingly compact, but packs a potent poetic punch.

(I actually went to the university library to find this on the shelf. It was like going back in time—walking through the stacks, smelling the old books. I was flummoxed at first that there was no card catalog to help me locate the Wordsworth collections. Then I came to and searched for it, of course, on my phone, which wasn’t nearly as satisfying as thumbing through cards.)

If Wordsworth felt the world was “too much with us” in the early 1800’s when he wrote this, imagine how he might feel about the world now. It seems the whole of the world, at least the “getting and spending” parts, is in our eyes unceasingly.

“for every thing, we are out of tune”… Out of tune, distracted, stupefied and numbed by incessant chattering and commerce and opinions and so much empty noise. Eyes down, wonders escaping our gaze, unmoving and unmoved.