Almost Sonnet Begun The Day After The 2016 Election But Finished Several Months Later, With a Line From A Wrinkle In Time

Almost Sonnet Begun The Day After The 2016 Election But Finished Several Months Later, With a Line From A Wrinkle In Time

Today it feels like the conference room where
I have worked since early this morning has become
its own planet, stale chill and beige walls, the projector
broken again and sending static blips across
the screen, words briefly obscured then returning
without change, or maybe really that the whole planet
has become like this conference room—spoiled,
reduced to two dimensions, somewhere none of us
can survive. All day I have been thinking of a book
from my childhood, how it has always felt equal parts
reassurance and omen to read that "only a fool is not afraid."
Now the afternoon sun has sunk low again
and I walk the room's perimeter to raise the blinds
from the wide blank windows, gaze out at the forest
preserve across the street where stripped branches
capture the last of the ordinary amber light and notice
a small girl in a red coat at the edge of the woods.
She points onward with a stick as tall as she is,
beckoning someone just out of sight to follow.