Giving Notice
She asks, did you feel that, or
was it Hugo under the bed?
Hugo indeed had flattened himself
against the floor
under the bed,
like he does in elevators.
I said,
I didn’t feel anything.
Most significant tremblor in decades
it turns out.
Tonight there will be fireworks for atrocity
children in cages
or shot by police
unending war
bigots on the march
the sedimenting of all possible
unfreedoms.
As the great Frederick Douglass said
to the oppressed this holiday is a hideous sham.
But its celebration, like all ceremonies,
anchors the citizens to the ground,
steadies numbed commitment,
an absence of noticing.
Later, I am seasick,
the magnets that tie me to the earth out of sorts.
I feel here and there the risings up,
the refusals of attachment
of belonging and consent.
I had felt the subterranean rumble,
notice of destructive transformation,
after all.
