Deferred Action
       

Look at the mountain, find my boots, abandon
              walls, look at the mountain. It's all I do.
The president tweets DACA is dead while
              the magnolia publishes other news: the future
will be pink. Whom should I listen to?
              Beets for lunch. Do not think of my father,
who loved them, as juice bleeds over the salad. Do not
              remember my mother-in-law, whose jewelry I wear,
glassy teardrops strung along a chain.
              She died far away, last verses unheard.
It's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard rain's a-gonna fall,
              he plays, the curator of beatness who
visits class with Dylan on cue. Scratches
              under scratches. No one's allowed to dream
anymore. A student comes by with poems and fear
              of deportation. So many words; so few.
Evening, home, where once I found on the lawn
              a note from neo-nazis. Look at the mountain,
crowned in rose. Where black is the color and none
              is the number, the singer foretold. Still I talk,
fail to talk, and grant some songs their visas.
              And look at the mountain, its gloomy hunch, its glow.

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Copyright © 2020 Lesley Wheeler All rights reserved
from 32 Poems
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission