Today's poem is by Katie Hartsock

Negative
        To whoever crossed out with a blue X the word "Sea" written in white cursive on the top iron guardrail of my second-favorite bridge over the Huron River

Of course it's not.
Were you angry, were
you sad? Are you
a disgruntled former employee
of the earth? You
have company. I know
some walks can get
you nowhere. I've seen
one child take away
a toy from another
not because they wanted
the lamb or train
or drum, but they
saw the other kid
so happy with it.
And a "no" erupts,
a need to negate
what might be someone's
favorite thing. When I
first saw what you
did, I yelled across
the water, startling swans
with their bottoms up
through air and beaks
deep in dioxane-plumed mud
back to the surface.
Their hearts can't say
what's been done to
them either. And why
did you use such
a pastel Marian shade
of blue? Why does
your X have that
strange sense of elegance,
patience, uncannily equal to
the word it came
to cancel? Almost as
if it were you
who first wrote "Sea,"
in a burst of
jubilant heresy, a fit
of twenty-first century Duchampian
reverence, a mood where
the world could be
different, when water itself
could be baptized, revised.
Then came a day
terribly certain that no
better difference is coming.
A day to recant,
not erase, your work.
A day like today.
I feel it too.

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Copyright © 2023 Katie Hartsock All rights reserved
from Wolf Trees
Able Muse Press
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission