The Vote - Garth Gilchrist

[Larry Robinson]

The Vote



My eyes wing out over misted fields

Dappled with islands of snow geese and sandhill cranes

I’m in my car making calls

To Hispanics in Arizona: “Your vote counts!”

This is our chance to save our country! Think of your children,

All the dreamers, young and old!

Our land. The air! The water! Stand for women, welcome and equality

Imagine a future worth living

 

Ten white show geese leap up from the water

Pure soft wings like angels against the blue

Trumpeting, boisterous, shouting Freedom!

Announcing themselves here! - here, on this land

“See this place?” they trumpet.  “See this water, these grasses and 

         reeds? They are ours and we are theirs!

They have been ours since the wind was here, that

Wind we sailed down on from the north you call

Canada, Artic, Alaska, Yukon

We are immigrants, perpetually. See our strong 

Feather shafts? Our tough sinewed chests?” 

 

So go vote!  Drive or walk – crawl if you have to – 

Get to the polling place and check 

That box marked inclusion!

Let your ballot shout for all the people and the creatures

Sing embrace and welcome.

Seat leaders who celebrate our American brother/sisterhood

Elect an America that reveres the land and safeguards its future

 

Now there! Look! An approaching V of Canada geese 

Whose visas are not required.

Are you voting for Biden and Harris?  

Yes!  Bless you!  Dios te bendiga!

Tendremos un futuro!  Going today, yes?

Get there early.  Be sure your voice is heard!

Every one counts – especially in Arizona!

 

The air explodes with the cackle cries of cranes

Sandhills sailing just overhead, shouting, swooping down from

The northern Rockies, mountains marching 

Right across borders, free as crane flight. A ranger 

Says smaller, stronger Sandhills come from Siberia. 

Siberia!  If I ask their nationality, what 

Will they answer? Daughters and sons of the wind?

Of the river courses, of marshy fields north and south

 

You’re taking your mamá – y su cuñado?

Your mom and brother-in-law are going, too?

That’s great!  And call some friends!   Todos los amigos que pueden votar.

All that are able to vote must vote, must go to the polls – when they get done 

With their work, their service, their gift to this country

 

The flooded fields are a cacophony of ducks – a dozen kinds, all

Colors and sizes – and voices! Like America

Cottonwoods ring the fields, cottonwoods burnished now, but

Greening in the spring to welcome throngs of songbirds just

Up from Central America – the long jungle isthmus, sending north its

Winged jewels of scarlet and vermillion, lapis and bright yellow.

Where is their home? Which is their patria?

 

And here we are – squawking together.  Dancing in these fields

In this place. And Coyote! See him, loping past?

The shaman who miraculously survived the scourge, that centuries-long

Determined purge of the wild, exterminating native peoples

And wolves, and whatever wild things might threaten the

Fierce taming of the continent. A boundless continent of ancient forests 

Felled for their wood.

The same Scourge some still desperately want to continue, 

Which would – if given the chance – drain, plow and replant these wet misty 

Wild waving fields into straight civilized rows of 

Profitable, decent crops. 

That Old Greedy Power, unseeing, unheeding of

The boundless riches of wildness. Of diversity, of many colors.

Their Scourge would hack down or spray down or curse down

The hundred kinds of forbs and flowers, sweet sedge, red reeds, tall grass 

– and small I see all about me here in this Refuge set aside by the seeing Heartful

To give us a glimpse of how it was, this stretching, singing land

This billowing tapestry of textures and tones, 

Wondrous seeds, whispering reeds

 

Refuge. Might America be a refuge again?  For its dreaming, flowing immigrants?

Can it rejoice in a rainbow of faces?  Can it be a refuge of sanity and new understanding?

A sacred place to its creatures , waters, health and life? Can it honor its native peoples at last?

Will it hold all its families and their futures in trust?  Can it be a place to thrive and belong?

This might be much to ask, but we must ask and then we must try. Because we dream, we must act!

 

Fernando, Ofelia, Rodrigo, Jose!

I call you because I can’t call everyone.

Will you vote then for inclusion and goodness?

You will?  For health and sanidad? For brotherly respect and kindness to the land?

For fresh water and for these geese and cranes and coyote? 

For all our place and our many peoples? 

	- Garth Gilchrist