Year of Wonders

The wonder is hooray, we made it!

To the end of this weird rotten year.

For those of us who made it.

For those of us not dead or dying or

Imploding with existential dread, loneliness and fear.

The wonder is we impeached 

the president, but did not convict.

And most people, sadly,

don’t even know the difference.

I read a whole book about the first time - Andrew Johnson 

and the failure of Reconstruction - to make sure I did.

But the wonder is how no one talks about it:

4 million black men and women, freed

But not free at all - not even today.

And what it has to do with MAGA and how 

Those who are not innocent, have never been made to pay.

How none of us are innocent, but all complicit.

All persons never having been equal: the American Way.

Trump as the direct inheritor of Johnson’s

Acceptable white supremacy;

Johnson as Lincoln’s irretrievable mistake.

Horrific legacy we must face: 

what reparation can and will we now make?

But there are so very many challenges: this world on fire

And yet some still debate whether or not 

there is such a thing as “man-made” climate change.

The wonder is how long we can deny, and bury

Our heads in the sand, and pretend

That it’s just this year, somehow, and

It will be better in 2021, magically.

The wonder is clear mornings now on my balcony 

where I used to nightly obliterate and escape.

Today the sun comes up, sweet bird song 

And coffee help my soul sit down, resting

And contemplating it all for one minute...

The wonder is there seems to be an infinite 

amount of mornings just like this - until there isn’t.