I was wrong. Dead wrong. Everything I wrote and posted yesterday was an illusion. This morning, I’m stunned and shattered. I can hardly comprehend the catastrophe that has befallen us let alone begin to parse out and dispassionately analyze or explain it.
I have endured dozens of political losses over the decades and a handful of satisfying wins. My motto, oft repeated, has been “Suffer, grieve, suck it up, look to the long arc of justice, and go back to work and battle again.”
I just can’t find that resilience this morning. This seems like the final battle against Sauron at the Black Gate of Mordor. As desperate armies clash there is no Frodo Baggins to cast the One Ring of Power into the Eye of Mordor to save Middle Earth. Permanent darkness and death and the Edenic Shire will fall with all the rest.
Or pick your own apocalypse metaphor.
The morning after the first coming of the Dark One was also tough, but not as soul crushing as this. In the little poem I scribbled there was at least a glorious morning on which to mourn. This year it is a glum November dying kind of Day.
The Day After the Election
November 9, 2016
The day after the election—
golden, crisp
azure sky.
Carrion crows
from the tips
of dying trees
cannot keep silent.
The calendar says
Kristallnacht…
—Patrick Murfin
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