Not long after the election, when the left had failed
to reassure the broken hearted,
and the broken hearted had elected a lunatic
out of spite, I kayaked out to where the light
had never been torn,
to watch the darkness gathering
in the mountains’ seams.
Cool rain on flat seas, ducks ahead of me,
white trails of their wings beating water
as they fled. Fresh scent of snow in the wind.
A loon in the distance
began to call again and again,
a soliloquy from the sea’s grey throat,
each note going deeper into
where a certainty had once lived in my heart.
The longing in the loon’s call—a knife
cutting through rain, leaving nothing behind it
but more longing, more rain.