I VOTED TODAY

by Kathy Conway

Walked wearily to the polling place at town hall
ignoring the peak foliage bursting color
in every direction on a fall day here in southern
New England.

I returned home on a street lush with trees -
maples, birches, elms, chestnuts, sumacs.
Windy yesterday yet warm and drizzling today,
I tread on a magic carpet of leafy shapes and colors.

Bright yellow birch leaves cover the sidewalk,
gradually changing to intense reds, then amber,
deep gold and rust.  I strolled wet-faced beneath trees
hanging heavily with colorful offerings.

Looking up, awed by a crimson Japanese Maple,
wet-black limbs foil to the beauty of its ruby red -
a canopy fit for a bride or a queen.  And I remembered that
change is the only constant; that this too shall pass.

The seasons come, go; heat and cold begetting
winter snow, spring green, summer blossoms, fall stipples.
Buoyed by the brilliance and brisk walk, I return hopeful that
my fellow Americans vote to effect change.

Kathy Conway splits her time between a cottage on the coast of Maine and her home outside of Boston. She's taught memoir poetry in Maine and Florida. Besides her chapbook Bacon Street about growing up in a large family, she has poems in themed collaborations.

ARS POLITICA

by David Feela
     (with apologies to Archibald MacLeish)





A voter should be imperceptible and mute
as a foot in a boot.

Mum
as the chamber of an unholstered gun,

inaudible as a candidate caught lying
at a rally for the deaf and the dying—

A voter should be aware
Truth’s not there.

*

A voter should be firm and free
As the swell of a sea,

Pushing, as if changing a shoreline
Grain by shiny grain against time,

Pushing, as an eraser over errors,
Until the paper stands corrected or it tears—

A voter should be firm and free
As the swell of a sea.

*

A voter should be equal to the task,
Not rash.

For all the history of losing faith
An empty ballot and a polling place.

For hope
A persistent vine crawling toward the light—

A voter’s not just me
But we.


David Feela writes a monthly column for The Four Corners Free Press and for The Durango Telegraph. A poetry chapbook, Thought Experiments, won the Southwest Poet Series. The Home Atlas appeared in 2009. A Collection of his essays, How Delicate These Arches, was a finalist for the Colorado Book Award. Unsolicited Press will release his new chapbook, Little Acres, in April 2019.