One Nation, Indivisible
By Laura Grace Weldon
Our daily walk is a simple
necessary practice,
especially now
when each day’s news
spirals us into tighter circles.
Beyond birdsong and breezes we hear
jeering laughter, see teens
jumping on an elderly neighbor’s hay bales,
hooting as their weight breaks
his farm’s winter food into uselessness.
They grew up on this street.
They’ve seen the old man walk the pasture
handpicking weeds wrong for cows
before letting his 30 or so Jerseys,
Guernseys, and Holsteins out to graze.
Seen his falling down house, his rotting fenceposts,
his shoulders bent like a question mark
curving ever closer to the ground.
My husband calls to them,
his voice lost to the wind,
advances toward them, calls again.
Only when he holds up his phone,
yells “dialing the sheriff”
do they angrily leave,
first dumping cans of Coke
on a bale still standing.
All the way home my eyes water in the wind,
streaming as if scratched
by hayseed tossed in the air.
So much already crumbling into chaff.
Laura Grace Weldon is the author of the poetry collections Blackbird and Tending as well as a handbook of alternative education titled Free Range Learning. She works as an editor and leads workshops on memoir, poetry, and creative thinking. Her poetry appears in Verse Daily, J Journal, One: Jacar Press, Neurology, Penman Review, Mom Egg Review, and others. She lives on a small farm in a conservative community, but has strange sculptures in her gardens and peace flags on her porch.