Flooded Bay

Red is the freshet, or is it blue?

Blue is the logjam, or is it red?

Purple—the flooded bay, sometimes after an election,

where we both cry and laugh at the tension between

freedom and equality and know it will always be so in a constitution

built with both ideas to be true.

I suppose I will just find comfort as the high tide recedes.

Knowing that next time I may go again to unsteady thoughts

if no one hears them, no need for grace. Maybe,

not every solution to a problematic relationship is deeper separation,

not every future calls for more energy and less patience,

not every present is more valuable in proportion to what it erased.