Ode to Survivors

Fall seven times, stand up eight… Japanese proverb

They strut in winter’s desolation bereaving green shubbery

Hungry for normalcy … a cricket, a bud, but no killing,

Hopeful till spring returns for equal forage and freedom.

We hunker down in fields of stark disinformation,

Bereave a lost culture of intellect, collective status,

Now a generational shift begetting bigotry and prejudice,

Scurrious name-calling, violating truths to blur reality,

Where justice and constitution are impugned by demigods.

Helpless, we wonder at the reset crux of a new world order

Of natural food replaced with lab grown patents for profits;

Where transnationalists hand out digital bucks for social credits,

While fascist storms pollute and poison democratic legacies.

There are days when the trauma of wild turkeys’ winter survival

Is easier than the trauma of survivors in this mass dystopia.

Annemarie Berukoff

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