How I Feel About Politics 
in America These Days…

OK, I’ll tell you how I feel.
I feel as frustrated as Sisyphus carrying that boulder.
I feel a fear trembling, on a crowded tongue of silence. 
I feel rusty chains rattling in a pitch black basement.
Who knows what else is lurking down there? Still,
I make no proselytizing statements or political claims,
so I feel like a tender seed planted in frozen ground. 
Like a lone wolf, helplessly howling in those hills.
Like a starving whale filled with plastic trinkets. 
Like ten thousand dead leaves that refuse to fall. 
I feel like straining sunlight never reaching the ground. 
I feel the depths of the ocean destroying its own town.
Absurd as Keystone Cops, but without their laughter.
I feel like a good try in the land of never enough.
Oh, but don’t mistake any of this for giving up.
You see if I were indigenous, I would be called, 
“Loses Every Battle Except For The One That Matters.”

–Dale Biron

I’m not sure which battle I mean here at the end of the poem? The one I won’t lose? The line wonderfully surprised me. Maybe it has something to do with awareness? Maybe it’s the battle with numbness and despair. Maybe it’s certainty? Maybe it regards hopium? Let’s go for real and grounded hope instead. It’s not the battle with fear, I’m definitely keeping that one. Maybe it’s the battle with insisting on being right. That’s a tough one. Maybe it’s the battle against battles? Un-win-able.