AFTER TALKING WITH GAIL

                    what was done in blindness,
                    loving what I cannot save.
                         – Wendell Berry (“To My Children, Fearing For Them”)

No bluecoats, no cavalry trumpeting,
no loping long line of sabers flashing
to rescue what was commonplace before

we put ourselves first, drank the water,
pumped the earth dry, our children
abandoned to a new order in time

of scrutiny and enforcement. We believed
in magic, but their emptiness is mine—
a greater void than I can fill with poetry.

WPC(4) — “Silhouette”