3 a.m. November 11, 2016 Turtle Cove Cottage Po’ipu, Kaua’i

By Chris Cummings and David Cummings

 

*    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *
D:
Drain the swamp     he brays   the president-elect     from his gold leaf
bedroom     in his gold leaf tower    Drain it he inveighs

*    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *
C:
Horror-clown they called him     that German newspaper     the Germans
who know from horror-clowns alright

*    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *
D:
They’ll come first for Dems    border-crossers next     then lives that matter
and those who pray five times a day     then neighbors     then you    then me
C:
They’ll unbury and burn all the oil   behead the Appalachians for coal
eeeeeeeeeeeeeee tunnel the earth    frack out the natural gas
All that and us    pyred and lit    rapacious fire    The black air we’ll breathe
D:
                              A fear governs them, unappeasable
I mean the ones he owns    his bottom-dwellers     murk-blind   uprooting
eeeeeeeeeeeeeee cypress     black gum     red maple              decay miasmal
eeeeeeeee That’s a swamp must smell sweet to him

*    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *
C:
But a swamp, my love, is an ecosystem: life-giving, life-sustaining, densely
fecund        A place where dinner swims by and all you have to do is make a net
to catch it     Or if you haven’t got a net your strong bare hands will do

*    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *
D:
Saddam Hussein finished off the Mesopotamian swamps in the mid-nineties
draining them    and thereby killed the livelihood and culture of an ancient
people     and killed the ancient wetland     A long misery
C:
humans     animals     plants     birds of many kinds, all lost     flamingos
pelicans     herons  sacred ibis     Basra reed-warbler     African darter
Mesopotamian crow… Those murders    his atrocity   It must be spoken of

A vulture perches on my heart this night and tears off pieces   Does that
mean I am dying     already dead   or am I hoping for death   now?

*    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *
C:
Now I sit alone at a table on the lanai of this cottage in the 3 a.m. darkness
ceiling fan turning slowly    almost noiseless     The fan light is dim but
there’s light enough for writing     and I can hear the ocean a block away
The waves    how they break    a ceaseless sound   bound to the moon
But the moon too is leaving us     inches each year     moving forever     away

*    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *
D:
And she will be so far from us    waves no longer rise and crash     and seas
are drained of vigor     the world’s ocean beaches tame as inland shores
C:

no tides
no tide pools
no clams
no clambakes

just a quiet almost lifeless lapping at our feet

*    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *
C:
I mourn for you tonight my mother-father earth        But I think in the end
you will survive us     if the miniature suns we’ve so meticulously    construed
so faithfully sheltered    in buried silos like precious grain     if they’re never
lit          their poisons I think would be more   than even you    could repair

*    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *    *
D:
But our own species?   Maybe this descent to madness is       you      thinning
our herd      returning us    to the ancient cave     damp and sooty and full
of shadows     Then you could start over   the Wild drained of us     build a
new offspring      if that’s your longing    more merciful than our kind
C:
One able to feel for the souls of all your children       the furred     the
feathered     the scaly ones too              Who will look out again on the stars
reflect on their mystery and be reflected    if     if I could believe     but the
night vulture has not lifted from my breast       has not yet had its fill

 


Christine and David Cummings live and write together in Menlo Park, California. They’ve both had some poems published here and there, and David’s collection, Tancho, was published by Ashland Poetry Press in 2014. “3 a.m. November 11, 2016” came from a journal entry Chris wrote right after the election, while they were in Hawaii celebrating their 10th anniversary, feeling the opposite of celebratory. They keep working on the poem; this is the most recent version, edited for length. A slightly longer version lives on their blog, which you can read here.

Reading recommendationTancho by David Cummings.