To those out there with hope
By Catherine Zickgraf
keep doing that.
Take candles into the thicket.
Take lighters, make sparks.
Elder statesmen tell us to hope
but can’t promise we’ll survive
to the other side of destruction.
They see broadly,
standing above the wild, staring
down through the tangled mess.
I don’t see a way out
but want to trust they can.
Here in the war of worlds,
an axis lured us with fentanyl
and sold us back the ruins.
It was easy to stir bigotry,
turning us on each other.
But I, without hope,
pass on this message.
Don’t hide and pray it stops.
Our descendants need to know
we burned the plantations down
and didn’t surrender.
May we preserve the books that warned us.
They foresaw, we all did.
If you voted for it, admit and own it.
May there be history books in the future.
May they record that we tried.
Our Republic won’t die in silence.
Two lifetimes ago, Catherine performed her poetry in Madrid. Now her main jobs are to write and hang out with her family. You can find her work in Pank, Deep Water Literary Journal, and 7th-Circle Pyrite. Her chapbook, Soul Full of Eye, is published by Kelsay Books. Find her socially in Bluesky and watch and read more at www.caththegreat.blogspot.com.
Photo Credit: Rapha Wilde on Unsplash.
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