How Brashly Brave
How brashly brave, embroiled in this brief life,
we chance our challenge to the unchanging gods!
Strike poses, strut the strident stage of strife,
take optimistic oaths against all odds.
Fearless of foes, false friends, futility,
we wrack our reason to reach, undestroyed—
though usually of no utility—
a burst of brightness bettering the void.
Anglo-Danish by birth but Bahamian by upbringing, Robin Helweg-Larsen has been published not just in Light, but in the Alabama Literary Review, Allegro, Ambit, Amsterdam Quarterly, etc. He is Series Editor for Sampson Low’s “Potcake Chapbooks—Form in Formless Times.” After decades in British Columbia and North Carolina, he has returned to blog at formalverse.com from his hometown of Governor’s Harbour.