Poem on November 8, 2016


My children, or my grandchildren, or some
anonymous fifth grader of the future, 
will ask me what I did on the day
the First Woman President of the United States
was—was not elected. “Did you canvas? Make phone calls?
Run the bake sale? Wear white? Wear a pantsuit?”

No. I paced the house, nervous as a cat in a storm
and all alone. I wore blue, dark as midnight.
I checked my computer obsessively, walked away,
swore I wouldn’t look again, then did.
I wanted to do more. I was completely incapacitated.
I lit more candles than usual, and kept them burning. All day.

I wrote poems.
I tried to breathe.
I cried a few times, softly.

And told myself repeatedly that this day 
was the outer form only. That what was important 
had been done, would continue to be done. 
Conversations engaged in, insistences, conflicts, respect and love,
laughing and flirting and flaring and listening hard,
cooking with others, walking alone sometimes,
raising my voice, accepting the microphone if it was my turn,
making a damn fool of myself too often to keep count
and waking the next day. Walking it back when I needed to
and risking again. Insisting over and over in every word penned,
every gesture of my body, every decision of the household,
that the personal, the political, the poetical are all
indistinguishably one and the same. The world turns 
on small motions we hardly see. Fill the oval.
Mend the frayed cuff. Write the next line. Open the door.