In honor of Valentine’s Day, our wonderful ADR community produced two wonderful sonnets about mediation and circulated them on the DRLE listserv.  I am sharing both here, with permissions.

From Kristen Blankley (Nebraska), who asked ChatGPT to write a sonnet about the benefits of mediation:

I can’t imagine a better way to let go,
Mediation lets our conversation flow,
For when opinions differ or turn to a brawl,
This process prevents hurt in dear ones and all.

This method of ending senseless striving,
Soothes raw emotions and brings peace to living,
It helps us reach understanding better,
When emotions churn and are just plain fetter.

The calmness this process brings is sublime,
A space for putting tempers in line,
A chance to express in ways that invite,
Solutions when debating doesn’t do right.

A wonderful way to keep bridges from burning,
For relationships now it’s all worth learning,
Let’s not forget the comfort it brings,
To both sides in what should be win-win things.

From Ilhyung Lee (Missouri), a human who wrote this sonnet , “To Mediate”:

To Mediate, or not to Mediate,
That is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind,
To suffer the slings and arrows of litigate–

Where some seek to implicate,
And emotions tend to aggravate,
Once fruitful relations to terminate,
While fees and costs aggregate.

Perhaps another to contemplate,
Where parties might concentrate,
On interests and needs to integrate,
Win-win options to germinate.

To trained third we must delegate,
The task to explain and facilitate,
[All right, if you wish, evaluate,]
Through some turbulence to navigate,
Perchance to settlement, to gravitate.

HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY!