Rising

A poem for a new autocracy

Armed troops infiltrate our own cities,

descend on our own citizens,

Loyal to nothing and no one but the

bloated and demented orange conman

with the nuclear codes.

Master of chaos,

domination,

destruction of tender things.

But still,

the vines keep growing,

the birds keep singing.

Creeping tendrils push on, push up, unruly, unpruned, bending, curling, serpentine, anything but straight-

Bursting with the diverse flowers

of this stolen land

Blue Asters and Morning Glories herald a new day, a grand rising, a rising up of things that must by their very nature rise

Cardinals, chirping, swoop in to feast on clusters of wild uncultivated purple beautyberries.

The Towhee hidden in the underbrush calls chewink!

Red-tailed hawks soar high above.

And even as the jackboots pound the pavement and the bullets fly,

we too, still exist.

We breathe,

We bend and fall,

We rest and resurrect again.

We dance and sing,

We wrap ourselves around each other

We pour out into the streets — “Whose streets? Our streets!”

With signs and chants and cries and fists joyfully and defiantly piercing the sky like vines reaching for the sun.

The kudzu overtakes the gravestones,

and the birds fly out of broken cages.

And we too are untamable,

feral,

and forever free.