Next Year or Someday
I’ll see you at the Farmer’s Market
moving slowly through the crowd – there will
be a crowd then among the stalls, shoppers
touching tomatoes glowing earth-blood colors,
asking unmasked farmers about their climate-year.
On a festive day I’ll join you to watch
the Miwuk dancers stomp and spin, fringes
moving with the drums. Back in the time of masks,
we traded Columbus for Indigenous Peoples
Day. We brought Dia de los Muertos to the Market,
singers cloaking their fado-mariachi.
Back then, I wondered if it was infringement,
being outside our pod under sky
with the dancers chanting their songs, a flute
exhaling, everyone stirring the air to particulate
eddies of grief and joy. Beauty, love, life
always at risk. Isn’t that what grounds the ancient
songs? Next year or someday we’ll gather again
to celebrate what we’ve lived, lost, and found.
by Taylor Graham
from Poets Online