I couldn’t watch it for so long.
Decency careening off the screen,
pixels of truth morphing into blurred,
ill-formed words of destruction, corruption.
This morning I started my day with the news.
Nestled in pillows on the couch, hot tea in hand,
I watched as Maine’s new governor
extended health care to tens of thousands.
Abigail Spanberger swearing in, Elizabeth Warren talking POTUS,
Nancy Pelosi gaveling, John Lewis saying no more blood shed,
H.R. 1 restoring voting rights, requiring release of tax returns,
shedding light on campaign financers.
I sighed, releasing the psychic kevlar coat from my shoulders –
cynical mantel of humorous late-night shows,
fascist fears of dysfunctional daddies – I poured another cup of tea,
settling into an old, now new-found belief: we will be ok.
Nan Ottenritter is a poet and musician living and writing in Richmond, VA. Her works have appeared in the 2018 Artemis Journal: Women hold up half the sky, Poets Reading the News, As You Were: The Military Review, Life in 10 Minutes, and The Brillantina Project.
Photo by Vlad Tchompalov.
