State of the Union
March 6, 2024
They say the president was feisty,
the occasion raucous, the old guy
as full of life and delight as the politician
glad-handing his way at a younger age, despite
his usual stumbling and slurring. Critics
frowned or shook their heads, called out
or jeered or held their seats as supporters
smiled and stood and clapped. Who
among us does not include that gallery
of friends and foes internally clamoring
to be heard, to gain their votes and footholds
to permanent parking spots and fat pensions?
Always Fear’s representatives do their best
to carry messages of unrest, as cheerier voices express
Love’s accomplishments, about which checkers
of facts insist on context. Under today’s
gray sky, I’m taking stock of the locked-
up knee joint, the elbow that aches. Out
my window, a kayak leans its plastic hull
against adobe fence. Moving water once slid
beneath it on rivers East and West when
I muscled it around obstacles, but now I’m
become a spectator, even as the aged
president steers his craft through
currents of change. His direction
may be in question, but look at him go. Tippingly,
he traverses the rocky currents, feeling
Time at his back, a gallery of opinionators
shouting their directions this way
and that, with a loud rush like rapids of rocks
that can pin and drown a paddler. I consider
a sage’s advice to be friendly to the shadows.
Say hello to that disrespectful foe in the protest hat,
give a nod to that under-the-surface trap. Acknowledge
what opposes with a joke and a rapid stroke. Get off
your ass and enter whatever vessel you have,
heading along that smooth green current, keeping
your craft on an even keel as you drop.
Lisa Norris’s story collections are Toy Guns (Helicon Nine Press, 2000) and Women Who Sleep With Animals (SFASU Press, 2010), winners of the Willa Cather and Stephen F. Austin State University Fiction Prizes, respectively. Her stories, creative nonfiction, and poetry have appeared in various literary magazines–most recently Willow Springs and Bullets Into Bells. She is a professor emeritus at Central Washington University and previously taught at Virginia Tech for 15 years. She lives in Ellensburg, WA.
Read more work by Lisa Norris appearing in Terrain.org: three poems and “The Lookout,” a short story.
Header photo by Jakub Stanek, courtesy Shutterstock.
