I want to touch what aches in us, the light
we guard to stay alive. My dear, come quick.
I hear a knock; I’m afraid. Is it you?
I dare to open and let hope come through.
I have lived as free as a fragrance on the wind,
as shackled to the earth as the vine that produced it.
May I confess in a poem what is forbidden us in prose?
I hire the police that protect my home from the hordes
that would tax me: I need nothing from the State, and so
give nothing to the State.
I just read that the virus is mutating, anti-vaxxers are joining other unsavory elements to protest public health measures, the president doesn’t see the need for mass testing but is now getting tested daily…
I notice my parents’ aging as I do my own:
Not at all, then in a photo, all at once.
I’ve been hearing Save the Rainforest
since I was small enough to sleep
in the safety of my parent’s bed
or snuggled with stuffed animals—
pandas, giraffes, monkeys, frogs;
A relentless South Texas wind poses impossible questions,
flaps the smirking flags until they are upturned,
mists the mown grass with evil’s sputum,…
They’ve separated 5,500 children.
No, they’ve discarded them
like cans of Coca-Cola,
5,500 children who reached our shore
like sea foam, salty, crying salt…
When children by gunfire die,
when the dreamer and the warden clash,
when statues betray the sculptor, we proclaim
This is not who we are.
“Would you break the law then pay a fine
If it helped the bottom line?”
“Yes,” says the CEO, “this job is mine
So long as I grow the bottom line.”