Today's poem is by Nancy White

When Susan B. Anthony Was President
       

The children and cattle and bees had votes,
paving spoke and old buckets sang. She
didn't campaign or craft promises, it happened
the way crops reach toward Demeter, the way

water runs to the center of a leaf. The past
became a word men couldn't use, like an old log
below the water not clearly visible and when
an angler catches his hook on it all he can do

is cut the line. When Susan B. Anthony
was president, our children knew the names
of all the small brown birds, there were no
wrong spellings any more. Skirts stopped

denying legs and instead spoke them. Nests
flew away from the barn, curtains refused
windows, the doors flung off their hinges.
For that brief four-year term, we studied

her perfect voice, its adamant muscle,
we loved our liberated wheatfields,
the renounced territory of spices,
the sudden and utter remorse of history.

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Copyright © 2023 Nancy White All rights reserved
from Atlanta Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission