At Albany bulb with elaine by alison luterman

Side by side on a log by the bay.
Sunlight. Unleashed dogs,
prancing through surf, almost exploding
out of their skins with perfect happiness.
Dogs who don't know about fired park rangers,
or canceled health research, or tariff wars,
or the suicide hotline for veterans getting defunded,
or or or. We've listed horror upon horror
to each other for weeks now, and it does no good,
so instead I tell her how I held a two-day old baby
in my arms, inhaling him like a fresh-baked loaf of bread,
then watched as a sneeze erupted through his body
like a tiny volcano. It was the look of pure
astonishment on his face, as if he were Adam
in the garden of Eden making his debut achoo,
as if it were the first sneeze that ever blew,
that got me. She tells me how her dog
once farted so loudly he startled himself
and fell off the bed where he'd been lolling,
and then the two of us start to laugh so hard
we almost fall off our own log. And this
is our resistance for today; remembering
original innocence. And they can't
take it away from us, though they ban
our very existence, though they slash
our rights to ribbons, we will have
our mirth and our birthright gladness.
Long after every unsold Tesla
has vaporized, and earth has closed over
even the names of these temporary tyrants,
somewhere some women like us
will be sitting side by side, facing the water,
telling human stories and laughing still.

• (c) Alison Luterman

• What is your resistance for today? Journal about what you are doing to keep yourself from utter despair.

• What do you take to mean by your “birthright gladness”? Write a poem describing what it is, how feels in your body, and how it can fuel our path ahead?

• If you were to tell a story right now, what would it be about? Who would you want to tell it to? And why would it be important to tell it?

You can also hear the poem being read here, by Anne Peek, as part of my project: 25 Poems for the Soul of the Nation.