Leonard Gontarek: Why Putin Hacked The Election
All winter long I received
emails offering bulbs and seeds
from a place named Eden.
And then it happened. False spring.
Crocus broke through dead leaves.
Small trees were reported in bloom.
Children celebrated in the streets
as after a war. Of course,
it ended and, impoverished souls,
we went back to living our lives of winter.
The birds sang, less with elan,
ramped-up on ennui. Temporarily, it returned.
Furry red buds in Japanese maples.
Perfect, brilliant crocus in cryptic patterns.
We opened the windows for the cats.
It as though the natural world were saying,
No matter what, we can enter your house
and do what we want.
Copyright 2017 Leonard Gontarek
This winter’s “false spring” was both otherworldly and too much of this world — I knew this in my bones when it was happening, but Leonard’s poem brings it to life in a way that helps me process this year’s events even more deeply as a citizen and as a poet. Leonard’s is an elegant and important voice; he is an “unacknowledged legislator of the world” if there ever was one.
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