Election Day

who makes decisions?

I love sports, though I hate to lose,

some people I know have recently lost themselves in sports

since the stakes in politics are so high, and  mean so much,

so why not obsess on how sports teams

perform in relation to other teams?

sports matter, but they matter more symbolically 

than in the concrete realities of day-to-day life,

troubles that increasingly weigh heavily on us,

plus the psychic weight of burgeoning hate and corruption in the country,

today our country completes the voting

as to who will represent us in Congress, in our states,

our system is so broken

that billionaires are free to do their best

to buy seats that will be agents for their personal financial gain,

the relative few who are exceptionally gifted with financial success

are treated as more important than we common people,

 the great mass of us are treated as if we are serfs

who labor only so that those who lord over us in the castle

can indulge their fantasies of control, hedonism,

of making a world where their genes triumph,

some of my wife's ancestors worked hard in their lives

to make sure The Bible was translated 

into a language accessible to everybody,

available as much to the ploughman 

as to the aristocrat,

for such blasphemy against the structures of power,

John Rogers was burned at the stake,

I hope today we reclaim decision-making in the country

from the elites who believe in themselves

far more than believing that everyone is a child of God,

equally deserving of power

and in finding a place in the sun.

by Henry H. Walker

November 3, ‘26