A is for...

No, I have never been a Hamilton.
At most and at my best I am a Burr:
Watching and waiting for the slow-built stir
Of something calmly and obliquely done
Though no less fully. What I have begun
Will finish. What I stop will not recur.
It's true, I must admit I might prefer
To be th'eclipse and not the setting sun;
To have them marvel at my very sight
As at a wonder, point and gawk and stare,
Instead of bidding all to all goodnight
Without surprise, as if I were not there.
Yet which is greater: sudden unchecked power
Or influence on every single hour?

On a Plurality already Forgotten

Life must, although it feels so wrong, go on,
Though everything about us is just worse;
And I, as ever, process it in verse.
The joy and hope I had is sadly gone
And dark has swallowed what appeared a dawn-
A blessing harshly tuned into a curse.
But vain it seems it will be to rehearse
The loss. The sun itself is pale and wan.
We must go on. In pain if not in bliss
Never forgetting that we hoped for her
Nor letting them pretend we were not there.
Let no one think when they remember this
She was not worthy, or we did not care,
Or there were more of them. Insist we were.

Cubs

There is a world in which we never left:
We moved uptown, became what you become
When everything is usual. Bereft
Of any reason to do otherwise,
We settled in--a common, routine hum
Of day to day. What everyone would do:
A situation full of unsurprise.
I was I had been, you were as you;
We got a dog we walked beside the lake
(You're still allergic, so no cat in sight).
I wonder what those two of us would make
Of what just happened. Would it be delight,
Or would they wish that they were us, away
From all the madness sweeping yesterday?