Poem for Friday, Turkey Run, Health Care

Witchgrass
By Louise Glück

Something
comes into the world unwelcome
calling disorder, disorder—

If you hate me so much
don't bother to give me
a name: do you need
one more slur
in your language, another
way to blame
one tribe for everything—

as we both know,
if you worship
one god, you only need
One enemy—

I'm not the enemy.
Only a ruse to ignore
what you see happening
right here in this bed,
a little paradigm
of failure. One of your precious flowers
dies here almost every day
and you can't rest until
you attack the cause, meaning
whatever is left, whatever
happens to be sturdier
than your personal passion—

It was not meant
to last forever in the real world.
But why admit that, when you can go on
doing what you always do,
mourning and laying blame,
always the two together.

I don't need your praise
to survive. I was here first,
before you were here, before
you ever planted a garden.
And I'll be here when only the sun and moon
are left, and the sea, and the wide field.

I will constitute the field.

--------

My morning involved being happy about health care law, debating about health care law, filtering people off my Facebook feed because they made such idiotic comments about health care law (I never know whether to fall over laughing or fall over crying when someone quotes George Lucas from a Star Wars movie about how this is how liberty dies, with thunderous applause, in reference to anything the Democrats accomplish). Adam went out running, then went to the pool with a friend; Daniel read me Reddit perspectives on the news, which often make me laugh just as much as Fox News. My favorite comments were from people who want to move to Canada to get away from the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, apparently not realizing that Canada already has taxpayer-funded public health care a.k.a. SOCIALISM.

I am SO ready not to be sick any more. My afternoon involved climbing temperatures that made it somewhat icky to be outside, though not as bad as is forecast for the weekend. There was a little bunny looking too sleepy and hot to bother hiding from me until it decided to run into the bushes, and a squirrel who dropped a nut on my head. We watched a DS9 episode for me to review, then watched an episode of Relic Hunter, so that Jon Stewart could put the morning's news coverage into perspective, particularly the rush to report it before anyone had time to understand it (Samantha Bee: "HARRY POTTER IS DEAD, JON!" *flips page* "Oh, wait..."). Here are some photos from Turkey Run last weekend, including a spider and another toad: