Privilege

In the mornings we searched for eggs

speckled with the colors of stone,

and watched the tendrils of the pea

reaching for the trellis, the rust feeding

on a railroad spike.  We preached the gossip

of ghosts under a sky of mackerel clouds

and charted the life cycle of dragonflies.

The afternoons we spent posting proofs

of the nine lives of nonsense,

the ironclad instinct of tribes,

and then walked down the street to the beach,

paying two coins apiece for the luxury

of swimming in a cold green sea. 

Back home, we doubted our enemy’s love

of cereal grains and grandchildren,

and wrote their names in faded ink,

with idiot fonts.  We knelt before swords

and flags and crosses, and cleared our throats

amid the smoke of a smoldering republic,

as all the while a robin perched on the fence,

singing for a mate.  Our evenings ended

with thoughts and prayers and cable news,

over bottles of supermarket merlot

and a bowl of radishes dipped in salt.

Lanny Ledeboer has been teaching high school history in Washington state for thirty years and writing poetry since college. This is his first published poem.