Listening to the Darkness (election triptych, 2016)

1.
I pause to take up the chickens' feed
and dump their water as we are heading out
to the election night party.

It is a momentous night, and we are full
of a year's worth of waiting. Near the coop door

two currently molting hens, lacking nearly
half their feathers, have roosted close together.
For them this night is simply
a blessedly mild one,
after the recent cold snap.

2.

We return home

in shock.

Whatever we expected

it wasn't this.

Thank God our state rep,

who strapped on a dust mask

to help clean out constituents'

flooded trailers after the hurricane

managed to win re-election

by 3 votes.

We can't begin to grasp the future
we are careening into

or even comprehend how

it happened.

Our kitten hears us enter,
after midnight, and sends up

a piteous mewing from his crate.

He comes out purring, tiny wedge tail up,

so grateful to be back with

the people he loves.

3.

Two days later my elderly cat wants

to take a longer walk than usual,

and though the dusk is deepening
fast this time of year

I indulge her. I've already put

the winter siding on the coop,

and put away my tools.

So we stroll together down a wooded bank,
then up the darkened lane beneath

dimly looming trees.
 

Somewhere, Hispanic children are being

taunted by their classmates. Someone

is scrawling "TRUMP" across a college's
Islamic prayer room door. A black woman

is told she will be raped and sent back

to Africa. Someone signing to a deaf

friend on FaceTime is told they are

retarded, not wanted in this country

anymore.
 

The leaves rustle and crunch under

my sneakers, her pads. We stop

for a moment at the intersection,
just listening to the darkness.
Then we double back up the

driveway, heading for
the distant lights of home.