I stopped watching it when the fascist clown
got himself elected the second time.
I’m not the only one, it was a widespread phenomenon
in this here US of A.
A collective decision not to juice our nervous systems
with outrage and fear every day.
I get countless emails, subject lines screeching
about the latest shocking thing he did, or that congress did
trying to please Mad King Donald. I delete them, open the one
promising new recipes for easy weeknight dinners.
This too shall pass. That’s what they tell you in AA,
when you’re new and hankering for a drink,
a beaker full of the warm south, so you can sink toward
sleep. This too shall pass.
And it shall. Someday I’ll be gone from this
pain factory. I raise my mug of coffee to that day,
and to now,
when thank god I can count on the sun
to keep rising and falling
or rather on this planet to keep turning,
which just happened to form
in what the scientists call the Goldilocks Zone,
that just-right band where water is liquid
and life can get on with its infinite creativity
making new things all the damn time.
This too shall pass. But not yet.
A poet, herbalist, and garden-tender, Christine Holland Cummings’ poems explore our connection to each other and to the more-than-human world. Her work has appeared in Iron Horse Literary review, Blueline, Manzanita Quarterly, Hamilton Stone Review, The Sand Hill Review, Reckoning, Dark Matter: Women Witnessing, and Quiet Diamonds. Her poems have been anthologized in Blue Arc West: An Anthology of California Poets and Our Last Walk: Using Poetry for Grieving and Remembering Pets.
