still fighting back tears
we honor native cultures
for July Fourth truth
how hard their lives were
yet their innovations rocked
our lame modern needs
from homes under sod
to sunglasses for seal hunts
they made a life here
their tenacious art
built in the midst of winter
reminds me of hope
so i paint a grin
and take them our one last time
crab legs included
A national emergency is a series of hurricanes on one coast and as many fires on the other coast, the direct results of climate change that our country chooses to ignore. A national emergency is the healthcare crisis, where we can’t get prosthetics if we’re missing a limb or pay for cancer treatment even if we’re dying. A national emergency is CEO pay which has multiplied exponentially for five decades and left the common worker with a salary too low to buy a house, buy eggs, or pay rent.
There is no national emergency at our border. There are millions of people, despite all of our national emergencies, who have faced far worse: farms that can no longer grow coffee due to climate change, dictatorships that have taken away all rights, medical care that includes fewer options for cerebral palsy or cancer than we have here.
Their emergencies trail behind them, left in their home countries weeks, months, or years ago, and like that train that they cling to carrying them across Mexico, they hope never to see again.
They are here now, families in tow, babies in tow, ready to work, ready to enroll their children in school and provide jobs for teachers like me, ready to take into their hands the American Dream that you have declared doesn’t exist for them.
They are not criminals.
They are not illegal.
They are not a national emergency, an executive order you’ve used to circumvent Congress on your first day in office.
They pick your food and clear your sidewalks after snow and build your roofs and work in your restaurants and run your factories and teach your children and make you rich. They are professors and lawyers and engineers and mechanics and everything in between.
They are human.
And after more than four hundred years of forced colonization and enslaved labor indoctrinated in our blood by imperialists like you, the only national emergency is how far back we’ve moved the dial of progress, and for how long we will make Suffering the motto of YOUR AMERICA.
a calming cycle
on a rails-to-trails flat path:
way to start the day
more history learned
at a medieval castle
built, burned, lost, rebuilt
my man boating us
back down the river, towards home
our heritage left
riding up river
in a boat we drive ourselves
weathering windstorms
the river’s flooded
even for Irish standards
yet we navigate
monastery stop
seventh century ruins
Irish faith runs deep
a long drive’s reward:
stellar food, oldest pub
and Guinness to drink
sleeping on a boat
knowing Athlone’s lights alight
can be quite calming
a castle day trip
cycling on sketchy roads
yet worth the visit
hidden Irish gems:
four hundred years of earls
residing in stone
science surprises:
this telescope discovered
distant galaxies
and Bruce got to stand
in the largest redwood grove
outside the U.S.
night ends with laughter
in a 1500s pub
kindness in their blood
botanic gardens
will forever be compared
to Monte’s beauty
tropical magic
trees and blooms of every shade
giving us NO shade
two thousand years old:
a tree planted by Romans
to bring us olives
on all future trips
beating Madeira? so hard
blue-green amazement
everyone loves pies
especially my “sailor”
sailing in England
his dream, to be here
honoring Admiral Nelson
at pub built for him
the travel bug bites
a little later for some
(i’m glad it but him)
through Cumberland Gap
we drive down to Tennessee
and stand in three states
it’s been many years
(the gap between visits here)
and everything’s changed
Pappy’s room is new
with the antique furniture
from their grandparents
a whole new kitchen
to fill Donna’s empty nest
with the light of love
this generation
will take the time to teach them
and fill in the gaps
they’ll learn who came first,
what they fought for, what they lost;
close gaps, open eyes
My husband finishes work at 16:00, but he invited me to dinner in the cool uptown neighborhood where he works tonight. Because he had to “flip a switch”, as the four of us girls teased him, at exactly 18:00, and he couldn’t be late.
And we won these smiles.
Someone with a camera (my camera) took our photo. A nice white woman with a GoldenDoodle sitting next to us. On a Tuesday in May that should have been eighty degrees but it was only fifty and threatening rain.
Threatening.
But it wasn’t a real threat. It wasn’t an 18-year-old one of my students who walked into an elementary school in Texas to kill three teachers and EIGHTEEN 2nd-4th graders.
Nope. That life, that teacher life, is for tomorrow morning.
Tomorrow morning, I will rise at dawn, or just when the bluejays call me awake. I will walk my dog two miles through my Denver neighborhood. I will kiss my blue-collar husband goodbye and let my baby daughter drive me to the high school where we live/work. And we will walk into the Italian-brick-National-Historic-Monument of a high school and pretend that we don’t know the kid who could walk into an American gun store and kill the next generation in ninety minutes.
And I have worked for twenty years in this profession where my heart breaks every GODDAMN DAY in an attempt to keep that kid from doing that.
And you know what?
Tomorrow morning, I am going to see my recently-arrived refugee students who spent thirteen years on a list or thirteen harrowing months waiting in line or thirteen lifetimes waiting to come to the savior that is America, and try to explain to them, in my broken Dari/Spanish/Arabic/Pashto… that we are just as broken as them.
Tomorrow morning, I will rise at dawn after a night without sleep, and I will be there for them, trying to convince the boys that the gun store doesn’t exist and the girls that they have a future that includes educational advancement, no forced marriages, and a life that they can create.
And look at my girls.
Just take a look at the three girls I have raised who have to face this.
Tomorrow morning.
And Biden, you’re going to give a speech? And Governor Abbott, and Donald FUCKING Trump, you’re speaking at the NRA convention this Friday, I hear?
And what the FUCK are you going to say? Thoughts and prayers?
Are you going to be there tomorrow morning, when the blood of eighteen elementary students is still staining our hands? Are you going to walk into that high school tomorrow morning, having that conversation with the kid whose negativity has walked him into the free-for-all, no-accountability gun store that is our nation? Are you going to sit by my side tomorrow morning as I try to make it through another day in a profession that vilifies and disgraces me with false promises and broken souls? Are you going to tell my Newcomers tomorrow morning that this really is the American FUCKING Dream?
No. You are not.
Tomorrow morning, before the alarm goes off, I will be awake. I will take my broken salary, my broken heart, and I will hug my kids. The only gun I will carry, the only bullets out of my mouth, are these words:
I am here.
I am here now. I am here later. I am here tonight.
I am here for you. For a million years.
And I will still be here for you.
Tomorrow morning.
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