a week after the Election

 

who we see in the mirror

I came back home the day before the Election

so that Joan and I could be together

to deal with whatever might happen,

the optimist in me hopeful that the country would choose

an inclusive vision to embody who we have been as a country

and build toward a future

greater than the whims of narcissism and retribution,

a friend years ago argued

that politicians should live for a time

on only what they could pay for with minimum wage, 

no wonder that those who have to settle 

for what the minimum gives them as their share 

are so angry at the rules of this game,

at the lack of politicians knowing their world,

the voters this time chose to knock over the table of the game,

without really knowing what happens next,

we had little idea that resentment and the price of eggs

could emotionally hijack so much of the country,

while masquerading as rational choice,

the system is not working well enough for them

so they chose to break it,

far too many of us chose to trust our well-being

to an angry, cognitively-declining male

who promised all will be well,

despite how many steps he demanded

that would have disqualified him to many previous generations:

mass deportation of would-be citizens,

abandoning Ukraine to Russia's greed,

enshrining tax policy to continue to allow the wealthy to pay little,

and caring nothing about deficit spending

and the burden that self-indulgence places on our grandchildren,

stopping the government from helping with rules, with infrastructure, 

with protecting people from the whims 

of profit-hungry corporations, power-hungry billionaires,

this last week I have chosen to tend my figurative garden,

I quit binge-listening to political news,

to the ins and outs of disasters, current and impending,

I got lost in an Audible book

of science/natural philosophy persevering during the Middle Ages,

I finished compiling my poetry of '24,

and creating a booklet of the questions and answers

that have suggested themselves to me the last year,

I finished planning and ordering calendars

of the Smokies, of Maine, of our visit to Germany,

I worked to deal with the fallen leaves that cover the ground

and smudge the view of what's underneath them,

there's a meditation I am cautious about embracing:

"they are the real lovers of God

who feel others' sorrows as their own,"

I need to choose to empathically leap

only into some of what might be coming at us,

I need to learn and act upon my carrying capacity,

I learned in graduate school the primacy of helping kids

develop a "crap detector," so that each can know

how flimsy the argument is if it's built on sand,

in our current case the sand that we choose to value

is on the Internet and on Fox "News,"

my heart aches for our grandchildren

who would like our country to be as a city on a hill,

inspiring all in the world to be their best,

rather than a fortress of our tribalism

while we look out for #1

and deny the equal humanity and value of the other,

when we look at our reflection to know who we are,

I still hope for love to expand us

to see all of Creation looking back at us.

by Henry H. Walker

November  12, ‘24