The Full Moon on the Fourth of July 2020

The fan palm leaves are still, no wind on them on a night like this, the land and the trees quiet as the country is as if it is time to quiet up everywhere that we’re simpatico with what is happening, the pandemic, the rise in voices about justice, change coming whether we want it or not, and if we are mindful, I think we can hear it, the duress, the way we need to stand up for each other, follow the rules for what needs doing. I put on my kerchief as a mask, grab my blue cane, walk out under the giant moon over head, walking with my 13-pound honey-colored dog until we reach the edge of the canyon where the cactus is in bloom and the aloe grows tall and thick, past dreams of America and growing older and being a lesbian in a world where women rarely come first, and I am ready to try again, work at home reading essays, thousands of them and later write more poems, plant more in the garden, follow all the change around me as we go from day to day, the way we have learned to walk slow and watchful under the luminous moon from out of the shadows into the light, past the yellow trumpet flowers blooming in the heat, what is unstoppable, the two of us unflappable, undaunted, holding on exactly as we know how

Charlene Langfur