The Garden of Verse: On the Theme of Gratitude, I'm Grateful for the December 2020 Issue of Verse-Virtual

My thanks to editor Jim Lewis for including three of my poems in the December 2020 issue of Verse-Virtual. The issue includes work by 60 poets, including strong efforts by Jefferson Carter, Steve Klepetar, Betsy Mars, Sarah White, Marilyn Taylor, Carole Stone, Barbara Crooker, Robert Wexelblatt... and so many others. 

Of my three poems in this issue, titled The Morning After the Morning After, There Will Be Consequences, and That November Feeling -- 

all written in the immediate aftermath of the Nov. 3 National Election, the one with the most impact for me is the first. "The Morning After the Morning After" refers to the changes in the outlook for the the final result in the 2 days following Election Day. When I went to bed on Election Day, the hosts on all the networks were speaking in dour tones about the strong Republican turnouts in the traditional "swing states" that would no doubt determine the result of the Presidential election. Texas and Florida, two states in which I'd had (foolish, it appears) hopes for the Democratic candidate were already in the wrong column. Others states, which had handed the Monster a victory in 2016 appeared to be following similar paths this year.... Well, you know all this. 

So on the "morning after" Election Day I was not feeling very good. Psychologically hung over. What would i do? Find another country to live in? Express my frustration with my country's affection with a veritable sick and evil nut-job by doing something stupid that I would immediately regret? Break a window somewhere?  

Happily, I began to reacquaint my paranoid brain with the pre-election prediction that the still uncounted mail-in votes were likely to run strongly Democratic. 

By that second "morning after," that trend was already well in evidence. Hence the emotional recovery in the poem that states in its first line, "I'm stepping from the ledge..." Here's the whole poem:

The Morning After the Morning After

I’m stepping back from the ledge.
The view from there is sickening,
a landscape roamed by entitled monsters
on whom we have pinned badges of honor 
for so much crapping on the landscape. 
 
Specimen days in a ravaged land:
sticks with dead flowers, stones with the faces
of people one might have known.
Today, a week from a killing freeze, 
the sun shines on the still-breathing leaves
and the compost bin keeps churning.
 
We walk the edges of a fault line
burned by the frost of a dead man’s embraces,
watching spellbound as the monster bleeds out,
but dare not yet descend
into the pit. 

To read the other poems, see Two More Poems 

To find poems by all 60 contributors to December's issue, 

see Poems and Articles