Daniel Ellsberg died while I was driving
among clouds. Where do demons go to hide
our thoughts from all the forces that conspire
past a square white church in a flooded field,
now that our own front doors can not conceal
its ragged slate roof on its short white spire
punctuating one bare patch of blue sky
to turn us into circuit boards who buy.
They hardly bother. They just stroll inside,
shining; objective anything but clear.
I think the point is for us to consume
everything without question. Nothing blooms.
They pop open your eyes, count the cold beer
left in your fridge and order you some more
on credit cards. Oh, this is still a war
but no one recalls the smell of newsprint.
Ink smeared our fingers. Pixels blind our mind.
is a writer, musician, and gardener in Middlebury, Vermont. She is the author of two sonnet chapbooks, Wild Earth (Antrim Press 2021) and Elegy for the Trees (Kelsay Books 2022). Her poetry has most recently been published in Verse-Virtual, Flint Hills Review, and Anacapa Review, and has previously appeared in Measure, The Lyric, Vermont Life, and the National Public Radio Themes and Variations program.
