On my local PBS station tonight, a documentary about the history of African Americans in the United States was airing. I caught the last 40 or so minutes of it. It showed footage from the night that Barack Obama was first elected President of the United States, and it filled me, for a few moments, with happiness. I just remember all the hope of that night. I actually believed that my country had somehow fundamentally changed. We were better. Kinder. More just.
Not feeling that so much anymore. I guess that I'm going to have to avoid watching the news for the next four years, or at least until Donald Trump gets impeached. It may be the only way I'll survive without having some kind of stroke or developing a personality disorder.
Perhaps Saint Marty should just pretend that he's deaf.
Going Deaf
by: Miller Williams
No matter how she tilts her head to hear
she sees the irritation in their eyes.
She knows how they can read a small rejection,
a little judgment, in every What did you say?
So now she doesn’t say What? or Come again?
She lets the syllables settle, hoping they form
some sort of shape that she might recognize.
When they don’t, she smiles with everyone else,
and then whoever was talking turns to her
and says, “Break wooden coffee, don’t you know?”
She pulls all she can focus into the face
to know if she ought to nod or shake her head.
In that long space her brain talks to itself.
The person may turn away as an act of mercy,
leaving her there in a room full of understanding
with nothing to cover her, neither sound nor silence . |
| That was a really good night. |
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