A couple of notes on this poem--I wrote this during some of the darkest days of the Bush administration--somewhere in the trough of 2002-2003, when the damage really began to sink in. I struggled against the futility of my own political views--nationalistic fervor was still running high, and I was feeling less American than ever. During this time I happened to see the documentary "The War Room." For those of you who have not seen this exceptional film, the most prominent figure is James Carville, Bill Clinton's campaign manager in '92. The movie details the campaign's triumphant endgame, and memorializes Carville's quirky brilliance.

As I was walking my dog through this brisk fall afternoon, for a few moments I dared to really, truly hope for the best outcome two weeks from today. I suddenly remembered this poem and the brief respite it gave me during the awful middle of the Bush regime, which seemed to go on forever. I'd like to think that this poem was perhaps the tiniest harbinger of better days to come, glimpsed down a long, long road, where a little light showed at the end.



HOPE

I know that I love James Carville
just as right now I know I love you,
and there are so many gorgeous quiet Saturdays before us
we will spend together or separately in the dead clean leaves
that fall towards the end of September, when children feel
a delicious impatience for cold nights we no longer feel
but in the flash ghosts of ourselves we sometimes pass through
such nights--fall arrives like this, for us. And whether or not
we are James Carville, or love him, as I know I do,
we experience the sharpness of what we do not feel
in miniscule bursts that shock through our thicknesses
like a flashbulb. James, I never imagined this adult life,
or you crowing through it in your birdy way--where
were you? I needed you so, you yokel, so indescribably
that I was incapable of imagining your face,
roundly crowded with thought, tipped towards its center
like a mashed penny. You are so smart, so smart
and so impatient I lean on the thought of you,
I rest my head on the thought of your middle back
like a sturdy corduroy pillow. I love you.
And I'm certain I will never get over it.