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always the hopeless asked to give others hope
the ones pushed up against wall after wall
when you’re done unpinning yourself
from the wall, please give hope
those who work twice as hard to seem half as good
being asked to do one more thing
we need to be seen
because things are not going well
and the crows are up to no good
Copyright © 2017 by Ali Liebegott. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on June 20, 2017, by the Academy of American Poets.
I want to grow old with you.
Old, old.
So old we pad through the supermarket
using the shopping cart as a cane that steadies us.
I’ll wait at register two in my green sweater
with threadbare elbows, smiling
because you’ve forgotten the bag of day-old pastries.
for Seamus Heaney
a box of coconut water
two cans of coconut milk
so many looking for help
some people care when a poet dies
a poem is a conscience
a report card, a confession:
today my lies were a motor that spun the Earth
how can you get truth from a hill
when I am the continent that drifts?
how can I taste what I’m mourning
when soon everything will be salt from the sea?
—8/30/13, Register 6
1 PM—5:15 p.m.