For President of the United States
Grizzly Bear.
For Vice President
Canyon Wren.
For the position of Secretary of State
The Giant Sequoia
And Secretary of Defense
The Sego Lily.
For Secretary of Treasury
The odor of sagebrush after rain.
For Attorney General
The sound of wind high in the pines.
For Secretary of Interior
Black-tailed Prairie Dog
And for Secretary of Agriculture
Big Bluestem and Switchgrass for as far as the eye can see.
For Secretary of Commerce
Fall acorns in the cheek pouch of the Yellow Pine Chipmunk.
For Secretary of Labor
The leap of spawning salmon returning upstream.
For Secretary of Transportation
The gait of the gray wolf, hungry, alone, belly-low over the Arctic tundra.
For Secretary of Health and Human Services
Ocean waves breaking on the beach and their hissing return to the sea.
My vote for the Secretary of Energy goes to the Sun.
My vote for Secretary of Education to the Milky Way.
I call upon Spring Run-off to be our Secretary of Homeland Security
And I nominate the call of the Mourning Dove as our Secretary of Veterans Affairs.
Finally, for Secretary of All That Is Good and Holy in This Land, I nominate the exact color of sunlight coming through the trees, lighting Thatcher Brook, 6:15 Eastern Daylight Saving Time, August 14, 1972, Waterbury, Vermont, a young boy, not yet ten, standing there, amazed, lost in the splendor of it all.
—
Charles Finn is author of Wild Delicate Seconds: 29 Wildlife Encounters, On a Benediction of Wind: Poems and Photographs from the American West (winner of the 2022 Montana Book Award), and co-editor of the textbook/anthology The Art of Revising Poetry. His second poetry collection, The Folding Chair of Now, will be out from Chatwin Press in April 2025. He lives in Havre, MT, with his wife Joyce Mphande-Finn and their two cats, Tija and Rilke.
