Mary Ann Honaker
OUR COUNTRY IS DYING
The ceaseless ants do not sense a threat, and
continue to build their mounds of sand. Whom
should they fear? Birds appropriate seeds, do
their tiered mating calls from tree to shrub. I
watch the leaves nod. Time is only time. Call
to the steep cliff; it will answer. In my
house I have blankets, tea, no enemy.
Sky portions out its portions of rain. An
unseasonal drought, the sky an enemy.
Who stuffs her reason under her fear? Must
we? The light drops a gear, soon we'll be
closed up in night's cloak. We are all worthy,
clocked in on the planet's time clock of
years. Is there to be an engagement?
I will engage my skin to light. I
won't pluck the rose, because it's your turn
to bend to it. Our years are clipped, so in
them bask. In them scream. In them nap, and the
rivers will flow from any direction.
My mind has an ocean in it, it's of
night, stars on water. There I drown. The
night and day change places, hover. Sun
leaves us: but it still shines elsewhere, and
night, that huge bear, paces the globe. We keep
still as night passes over, keeps walking.
We have loneliness in common; it’s
a curious bell jar. In common we hold the
change of autumn light, winter's scrim on heart.
In common the earth breaking in spring, that
cracking that breaks us open too, asks
how much hurt is worth it to live. In the
summer, we buzz like trapped bees and question
less. The moon is there and then it's not.
I look for shine and find a scratch in my
sky instead. Full moons make us furious.
Do we listen to the heart or mind?--
a question we share. Salt air, how the
scent of it humbles. Immensity, heart,
pulses in the night, and the sea at night is
overwhelm. Galaxies above, and the
deeps below. They say it makes us smaller,
but I say we expand, we are cousin
or closer to the furthest blue star of
the heavens we can't with the naked eye, the
largest telescope, see. We are the sun.
We are the earth, when it turns, we with it
turn. We are the hawk's fine-tuned eye which sees
the chipmunk, and we are the chipmunk, and
no one steps to the edge of what she knows.
Everything is me; I am everything.
This goes for you too, and for the fly, it
goes. All is One. Imagine what god hears!
God hears how my cat hears my smashing the
keyboard keys. God hears my tuneless gnashing
teeth in sleep, my teeth's vibrations, even.
God hears the tree's heartwood tremble as
the storm rumbles. What is it? We're all it.
Our country is dying, the nation hears.
The universe expands; the sun burns, the
fuel is limited. To be is a blessing
in this iteration. Others follow. The
cycles are endless, cold or fire a door.
Someone breathes a long exhale. We go to
the end of it. Then the long inhale. The
exhale has a bit to go, in my mind.
Of course there are things we all should.
Of course there's a right, and it's the only.
But let the sea-doors and air-doors open!
The doors of fire and night! We can walk from
the world and still be of the world, of the
endless fixing. Injustice hurts the heart.
So we must. But meanwhile, hunger. An
exquisite meal made by your enemy,
brought to table by your foe, who
you tip twenty-five percent. When he gets
into his car, a murmuration in
tune to the bass line, starlings taking risks
and just killing it. Dusk rises from the
pavement like a mist. He's in no danger.
Neither are you, the arugula of
your salad poised on your fork, becoming
a part of you bite by bite. It's in a
country, this country, this happens, my friend.
Note: This golden shovel uses Joy Harjo's “This Morning I Pray for My Enemies” from Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings: Poems.
Mary Ann Honaker is the author of Becoming Persephone (Third Lung Press, 2019), Whichever Way the Moon (Main Street Rag, 2023), and the forthcoming Night is Another Realm Altogether (Sheila-Na-Gig, 2026). Her poems have appeared in Bear Review, DIAGRAM, JMWW, Juked, Little Patuxent Review, Rattle.com, Solstice, Sweet Tree Review, Tuskegee Review, and elsewhere. She currently lives in Beckley, West Virginia. https://maryannhonaker.wordpress.com/
