We always wanted for you
slow green summer days near a river
where you could learn water:
how it suffers us to enter it with great transparency,
how it loves us in its own rhythms,
which are music to our ears.
We wanted sunlight
to match your skin warmth for warmth,
and a silence deeper than birdsong or the wind
to fill you with its peace.
Not this poisoned earth,
these days empty of laughter.
Some power we thought we revered
picked us up in its hard hands and pulled our wings off.
We believed it would be more generous.
There are people who will take everything
for their own. They’ve swarmed over us.
You’ll have to find strength
We didn’t have.
Don’t let anyone tell you, Everything dies,
as if what’s happening is only Time.
This poem first appeared in At the Corner of Hope and Despair, An Anthology for the Trump Era, edited by Charlotte Muse et al (Pope Street Press, 2024).
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Charlotte Muse lives in Menlo Park, California. Her poems have appeared in magazines and anthologies. She’s written five chapbooks and a full-length collection, In Which I Forgive the River (Broadstone Books). Recent awards include finalist for the Orchard Street Press Poetry Prize and a nomination for England’s Forward Prizes, both in 2023. She’s also won the Yeats Society of New York Poetry Prize, the Allen Ginsberg Award, and the Elinor Benedict Poetry Prize, among others.
