Talking to Myself Nineteen

Baby chicks on roosting bars in their coop.

Talking to Myself Nineteen April 26, 2020

Every day more white iris. The chickens haven’t
bothered them. Tracey gave me bulbs, which I
duly planted, but they didn’t bloom until this year.
Then the chickens ate the weeds which held them
back, and here they are. The violets returned when
I let go the reins, some mysterious, some defiant. 
This morning I think of losses. Lisa Mansfield
whose smiling face I met in the post office. I worried
about her, living so close to that coal ash dump.
Poisoned, then murdered, along with her husband
still angry about that coal ash dump so close to their
home. Angry enough to kill, but someone else killed 
him and Lisa. Then John Cross, so kindly, often 
gave me rides to meetings. Once he fixed a weak 
board on the back porch. Terica-for-Peace dies
of lung cancer. She cheered me on when I began
working against fracking. Then Johnsie. She knew 
the coal ash trains going through Southern Pines
were death trains. People talked about her love
and her smiles. No one was a stranger. No one
listened to her warnings. Was it the cancer which
killed her, or the cure? Now our twenty-first
century plague carries off thousands. What have we

come to in the land of the Pilgrims?