lillian the home poet

How did we get to this place?
When did ice become so much more
than a cube you put in a glass?
When did it become routine
for a president to continually lie?
For masked agents to roam our streets,
break into homes without a warrant?
I mean, I know people don’t agree on everything.
We’ve had two political parties since the mid-1800s.
But when did the abyss become so long and so deep,
that Congress members no longer work across the aisle?
I don’t have a plan to strengthen immigration policies.
But I do know “strengthen” does not mean
assaulting people based on skin color and accents,
or gassing peaceful protestors.
Close to being an octogenarian,
I’ve held signs aloft at demonstrations.
I often raise my pen to paper,
exercising my poetic “license”
to challenge the status quo.
It’s what I can and must do.
I will not tread water in this whirl pool.
Tell me, what are you doing
to change the tide?

Photo taken at a demonstration in Boston Commons.

Written in the style of Mary Oliver, one of my favorite poets. I’ve used the last four lines of her poem, The Summer Day, for inspiration.

“Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

I believe Mary Oliver, if she were alive today, would be asking the same question I ask at the end of my poem. In that way, and attempting to employ her style in my poem (although I’m certainly no Mary Oliver!), I try to honor her. Here is her poem:

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean —
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down —
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?