to appear in Waterways: Poetry in the Mainstream in January 2017

These blooms

(after David Budbill’s “Who I Love”)

         

                                     the last, sad bloom of autumn, the chrysanthemum…

These yellow blooms brought from village market, its
only, set in a barrel in trailer park by northern lake

These yellow blooms in barrel reminding me for these last
days here of cooper, the word, and Anna Julia Cooper,

Whom I love though in all her 105 years never knew,
whom I regard as blessed among us, among others, beloved:

Dorothy Day, Flora Tristan, Mary Oakes Davis, Helene Demuth,
Gwendolyn Brooks, Mary and Lizzie Burns, …

And Mary, Mother of God.  All of them worthy of praise
in these last days of autumn when the colors of change console us

And the voices of brave women remind us to never, never give up,
never believe that our demand to bloom in truth and justice

Will be silenced in a winter of despair.


                                   Sylvia Manning