Friday, March 4, 2022

 Seven degrees this morning. Spring is arriving as two lions, both of them cranky.

Yesterday turned out to be fairly productive, despite my Ukraine worries. I dealt with a bunch of paperwork, got through a chunk of editing, finished a poem and started revisions on another, went for a long walk, and then wrote down some interesting new blurts at the evening salon. So I'm now sitting here with my cup of coffee and a sense that I'm keeping my finger on some kind of pulse, even if that pulse is only my own jitters.

What to do, what to do . . . What can I do?

I can do my work, so I am doing it.

Poets are crisis workers. We've always been crisis workers. At moments of despair, it's our job to step up. We can't stanch the bleeding, but we can speak.



Dooryard

 

Dawn Potter


Blue jay screams in the almost wilderness—

she Wants she Wants she Wants.

 

Nothing but flames will grow in this wind.

 

Back and forth the blind mice scuttle.

Their nation crumbles and thrives.



[from Accidental Hymn (Deerbrook Editions, forthcoming)]

3 comments:

Carlene Gadapee said...

This poem is prescient-- I am floored. It's perfect, at least in so much as it completely captures how I am feeling about things.

Thank you.

Dawn Potter said...

Very glad it's working . . .

nancy said...

It was hard to go back to school after February break. I kept looking at my senior boys, doing their silly senior boy stuff, and thinking of their counterparts in the Ukraine. Worrying about the one who has already signed up for the Navy. Thinking of all the women saying farewell to their husbands and sons. It is so surreal to be living in a world of such heartbreaking contrast.