At the End of the Party

Years ago I hosted a party at my home, and as the sun set and our wine glasses emptied and filled again,  the subject turned to politics. Most of my guests were fellow academics with whom I sympathized politically. What bothered me in thinking afterward of the conversation was the condescending certainty with which some of my colleagues pronounced their ideas as if those who differed from them politically were outside their circle of understanding,  It's a danger we all face: to see the opposition as Other, beyond reason, unknowable, scary. When politicians speak of their opposition as "traitors," "evil," "unpatriotic," reducing everything to an either/or scenario, an "us vs. them" situation, my hackles rise just as they did that evening among people with whom I had much in common. And I think of a poem I wrote after that party. I first titled it "At the End of the Party," but later changed it to "The End of Politics." I'm not sure which title fits best.

The End of Politics

At the end of the party the chuck-will's-widow calls

from the edge of the wood

and over the sibilants of patio murmur

a barred owl hoots out its prey.

These are the certainties, like the changing of seasons

or the winter caw of the crow,

or the haunting melody of the white-throated sparrow

in a forest of tag alder and pine.

Listen, I want to say to the others,

the things that matter are these:

a glass of wine at the end of a day,

friendships that stand against time,

and the hand of a child curled trustingly in yours

like the beating heart of a fawn

waiting in the copse while its mother breathes deeply

the breeze from the zoysia lawn.

The words you speak now

you will certainly betray

in a moment you cannot foresee,

of passion or anger or sudden indifference

with the dark smell of blood on your hands.

Ideas are not certain; they are bathed in a light

of neither sun nor stars nor moon,

but of the flickering flames of lived experience

illuminating the walls of a cave.

Another glass of wine? A cigarette, perhaps?

A kiss on your shoulder or lips?

What will you remember in the dawn of some morning

between sleep and rising

and the onsetting dullness of day?

The words you have spoken with such sincerity

or the sharp scent of rosemary crushed 

between finger and thumb?

--Anita