Today's poem is by Rebecca Aronson

Magical Thinking
       

I know we know no cure for this century
with its burning islands of trash, its traps of plastic.
On the sale table, a book of photographs is all brightness

and geometry, well-framed portraits of someone else's daily misery.
Yellow sheets hung on the line to look like sunshine
against a patchwork wall of dissipating mud. Beauty

fools me. I didn't want to wait for what came next.
I didn't see what was coming. I didn't ask enough.
Will these be the mantras of the next decade?

Because it's painful to know the truth
I eat little packets of seaweed
and imagine coral reefs somehow bubbled back

from ruin. Because wild poppies grow in sidewalk cracks,
fed on gravel and street tar, I carry hope on my hip
like a weapon I'm always ready to flash.

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Copyright © 2023 Rebecca Aronson All rights reserved
from Anchor
Orison Books
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission