The Day after the Inauguration

As with all things mighty, this started small
negligible, a shade of blue infected
the horizon in slow, no, sluggish motion

something large happened on the other side
of the world, and the blue bled from behind
the skyline, the day that comes before ours.

This was the day the white, old man was sworn in
the shade of blue at the horizon bloomed
it glistened on wreckage on the highways

gleamed on garbage bin covers, shone on tents
of the homeless of Los Angeles, woke
office workers living cramped in their cars

it gave a sparkle to the crisp whiteness
of the hospital sheets of the dying
and of those already tightly tucked

it lit the faces of nurse and doctor
leaning against the hospital’s wall, allowing
only the eloquence of cigarette smoke.

The growing blue started to encroach
on the part of the sky owned by the noon
it moved with the stealth of clouds, lent its color

to the streams and seas of other people
brown in their brown lands, waking to work
a woman with a buri hat stopped and stood

in the middle of a rice field, as if listening
the flooded fields gleamed under the blue sky
she stood on the mound between paddies

hearing the words of the white, old man
on a podium beyond the horizon
words flapping from that day before today

he spoke from the land feared by many
she heard, and with a nod no one will notice
she thought of giving the man a chance.