We Will Fight To the End

Okra plants just beginning.  July 2014

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THE OMENS ARRIVE XIX.   July 19, 2015

You can’t argue with a light display like 
I have seen both outside in the world
and inside in my deepest mind.  I am
chosen, yet I fear. How can I, at 
nearly seventy-eight years, do all
that this omen insists I must do?
A day at a time.  Resting when I can
rest, working when time opens.
Speaking when my opportunity comes.
–The Omens Arrive VII., April 12, 2015

When I said, “We will fight to the end!”
they cheered and clapped.  Today I wrestle
with grass roots, digging, pulling, jerking 
them loose to make room for okra seeds.
The rains came to water what I planted
three days ago.  Each garden chore seems
beyond my powers, but day after day I
make these spaces for flowers and vegetables
to grow, a few feet at a time, on my hands
and knees.  It’s the way I do everything.  
Work, then rest.  Do the most urgent first.
Wall off despair when it sneaks around
the curtain.  I’ve made this farm fertile.
Now it gives me wild, unruly growth:
berries and figs, leeks, carrots, tomatoes.
If I’m persistent, okra and beans.  Human
storm clouds gather, too.  We take shelter,
assess strategy, plot actions, laugh.  We
fear the harm those lightning flashes can do, 
but storms have a double-edge.  Yes, they
terrify, but wait.  Here comes life-sustaining
rain, with sun to follow.  Then fruit.

***

Judy by "no coal ash" sign in downtown Moncure, the Coal Ash Management Company, Charah, uses that building on the far left. We put it up in the summer.  Now the coal ash trucks have to pass it.  It stands.  The WRAL report showed it on Oct. 27, 2015.