No More Sorrow & 2 more | Jacqueline Jules

The Voter Across the Aisle

I have set my bow in the cloud,
and it shall be a sign of the covenant
between me and the earth.
—Genesis 9:13

My right to feel safe from a stray bullet
versus your right to feel safe carrying a gun. 

My right to make personal choices versus 
the choices you think I should make.

When we vote we see someone 
who worships at a different altar. Not 
the person who buys food for a neighbor
or takes an elderly aunt to the doctor.

The voter across the aisle is a foe to unfriend 
on Facebook, delete from our cell phones.

We stay on our side, glaring. Pray 
for a flood to wash the wicked away.

We forget that the sign offered in the clouds 
after Noah’s ark was a weapon of war, 
turned upside down.

Could it be time to consider
arrows not aimed at each other?

Pause to admire so many different colors
sparkling side by side.

The Neighbors’ Dalmatian

Back in Nashville,
long before leash laws
when dogs were allowed
to roam across yards,
the next door neighbors
had a Dalmatian who peeved
our yapping toy poodle.

We were small dog people.
The neighbors liked them big.

And their Tommy’s tendency
to jump unnerved us.

“Tommy likes to greet people,”
the neighbors grinned, 
as we stepped back.

Sometimes I couldn’t fall asleep
imagining that spotted monster
pouncing on my precious Pickles,
her fluffy curls flattened 
beneath the bigger dog’s teeth.

But the neighbors’ Dalmatian 
never bit my poodle in the five years 
we lived side by side. Something
to recall when judging others
who don’t vote for the same breed 
of canine that I do.

No More Sorrow

She didn’t say 
he was in a better place,
or ask me to trust 
Heaven’s inscrutable plan. 

She touched my shoulder
and wished me no more sorrow.

No more days adrift,
mourning like that mother whale
who carried her dead calf 
for a thousand miles. 

She hoped I’d see color again. 
Perhaps the pink shoes in my closet
or the orange daylilies overgrown
in my yard. That I would once again 
greet sunlight curling under the curtains.
Taste honey on a corn muffin.

She wished me no more sorrow 
and gently lifted my grief.