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Necromancy for the Bitter (by Brian Koukol)

I planted a coast live oak seedling
in the front yard today,
not with my own vestigial hands, 
but through the sentinel, pallbearing palms
of an able-bodied surrogate.

I can see it now, six inches tall and
stolid against the gentle breeze—
a pittance of cupped, spiny-toothed
leaves dangling from a stem curved in
proud contrast to my corrected scoliosis.

Long after my ventilator is sent to palliate
another among the unfortunate dying
and my lungs are but dust
on a slagged pair of Harrington rods,
the little oak might be a three-foot whip,
battered but not broken by the ephemeral desert breath
that creeps over mountains named by the Spanish for
some saint that never kept their end of the deal.

If drought holds off for a year or three
and my oak escapes the quirks of fate,
one day it might spread and thrive
until its carpet of jagged leaves bloody
the bare feet of a child or passing Pomeranian
and I live again through their pain.

Necromancy for the Bitter by Brian Koukol - Poems | Academy of American Poets

 

 

Pity the nation that wears a cloth it does not weave

and eats a bread it does not harvest.

 

Pity the nation that acclaims the bully as hero,

and that deems the glittering conqueror bountiful.

 

Pity a nation that despises a passion in its dream,

yet submits in its awakening.

 

Pity the nation that raises not its voice

save when it walks in a funeral,

boasts not except among its ruins,

and will rebel not save when its neck is laid

between the sword and the block.

 

Pity the nation whose statesman is a fox,

whose philosopher is a juggler,

and whose art is the art of patching and mimicking

 

Pity the nation that welcomes its new ruler with trumpeting,

and farewells him with hooting,

only to welcome another with trumpeting again.

 

Pity the nation whose sages are dumb with years

and whose strongmen are yet in the cradle.

 

Pity the nation divided into fragments,

each fragment deeming itself a nation.

 

~ Kahlil Gibran

(Book: The Garden of The Prophet)