Not a Poetry Substack

except right now I can only write poetry

11/17/24

The two year old
keeps saying the name
Kamala Harris
like a chant of things that cannot be

maybe I shouldn’t have taught her
those words, that name.

There are so many things she doesn’t
know
yet—
the difference 
for instance
between yellow and orange
or 
the sound a hippopatomous
makes

or
of course
a world better than this one.

This is not a poem about giving up
this is a poem
about grief
and how it can’t be rushed.

Someday
too soon
she’ll learn other words like
ophthalmologist
kaleidascope
obfuscate
celebrate—
she’ll learn
even
that the letter Q is nearly always followed by a U;
that mauve is a lot like
purple
that kindness is work, that democracy is not a given,
that even a platypus
probably
makes a sound if you just
listen
 and in that way
she’ll teach me
too
to find the things I haven’t yet
understood
to find a way forward 
I hadn’t yet
considered.