Soapbox

I am exhausted  but I cannot let go,
cannot allow myself to sleep.
I feel as if I have to see it all,
absorb each patient rock, scrubby sage and circling hawk
as if by the act of witness I can bind it to me
and myself to it.

For surely these will be my last-ever glimpses of this place
so ancient and so newly born:
cradle and crypt of primordial bones
yet raw and aching, still smeared with the blood of its birth.

When they said "Greater Yellowstone"
I was expecting rolling grasslands and steep, conifered hills.
To my weary, eastern eyes this high desert plateau looks like
a place that is still under construction-
Welcome to Montana! Pardon our mess- we're redecorating!
The buttes ringing the horizon are just huge mounds of rock and dirt,
the winding, scrub-choked gullies leading away
are the tracks of a gargantuan bulldozer that recently pushed them here.
Their flanks are bare, raw and stinging like the knees of a bicyclist
sent tumbling across her chip-sealed roads,
random bits of brush clinging to wounded skin,
rocky bones exposed to the stretching sky.

The woman across from me has been asleep for an hour
but something makes me shake my head,
stay awake, hold on.
Foolish.
This land has existed for milllions of years before I arrived to bear witness,
will carry on for a million more without me~
yet I feel beholden to these hills,
responsible.
If theoretical physicists are correct and we do influence the universe
by our mere presence,
change the cat's destiny just by looking at it
then perhaps my aching eyes can do some good to this land.
Maybe, by paying attention, I can nudge the clouds to rain,
help trees to struggle and grow,
bison and elk and mustang to hold on against the steady progress of death.

From this dark and wind-swept morning
I reach for something strong to carry with me,
pray for something bright and good to leave behind
but I have nothing to offer but my observance-
two weary eyes to acknowledge
the creeks and dry washes, rattlesnakes and gravel,
stubborn buffalo grass and suddenly bright irrigated fields of hay
that fly past at 70 miles per hour
as the bus rattles on, heedless of my obligation,
hurrying to return me to the humid fields and round, green hills of Ohio.

Turbulent clouds part at last and light streams through,
fingers stroking the broken earth in benediction.
I rub my eyes and nod,
Amen, and amen.

Dear GOP members of congress-

    I have been hearing a lot of talk from many of you lately about federal food assistance to hungry people, and frankly, it has me amazed. It may seem presumptuous for someone like me to lecture a member of congress about a federal program, but you seem to have a lot of crazy ideas that need to be set straight.

    After the GOP first reduced the amount of money budgeted for the SNAP program, then cut it entirely from the Agriculture bill,  those of us who believe feeding hungry people is a good thing for a wealthy nation to do were understandably upset.  Some members of your party tried to justify this callous disregard for the poor and struggling by saying that if no money at all were spent on 'food stamps', no deserving people would be denied assistance… implying that the millions of citizens getting temporary assistance are ALL undeserving!
   It has also been suggested that children shouldn't get food unless their grades are good enough, and that people with cars and telephones clearly should not have food stamps.
   Another said that he knows for a fact that the program is "100% fraud" because he saw two people buying food with a SNAP card and they were healthy and had nice sneakers on and obviously 'should be working'. And many of you, including Paul Ryan and Eric Cantor, have said that there must be a strict work requirement for food stamps because otherwise it enables people to be lazy.
    And one even tried to justify it by saying that God doesn't want them to eat.

    Allow me to clear up a few things for you.
    First of all- SNAP not the same as unemployment. Just because you see someone using a SNAP card doesn't mean they are not working. Sadly, a significant portion of food stamp recipients actually have jobs- it's just that their jobs pay poverty wages, because people like YOU refuse to raise the minimum wage. Talk to your friends the Walton family about gainfully employed people who still cannot afford to feed their kids: millions of them work for Walmart!
    It also is not a program only for crippled people, though many disabled people do get food stamps. Healthy-looking people can be unable to afford enough food to eat. There is also no requirement that people stop exercising or sell all their worldly goods and  wear grass tied around their feet instead of shoes while they get temporary food assistance. If they sell their car to qualify- how will they get to the job you insist they must have? Or do you suddenly plan to support mass transit?
    Additionally, sometimes people who have a serious illness or accident and no insurance end up needing food stamps for a while to feed their kids. This situation is unlikely to end anytime soon as long as your party keeps trying to stop them from ever getting insurance.

    Studies show that actual fraud in the food stamp program is about 1%… which I'm pretty sure is much less than the fraud that goes on in Washington.
 
    Forgive me for thinking that your work requirement is simply a convenient, 'tough-love' excuse for cutting money for poverty programs in general so that you can give yourself another tax cut. How exactly would this even work? The majority of people on food stamps are children: will you make them work? (Or like your guru and spokesman Rush Limbaugh, do you think they should dumpster-dive instead?)
    Another large demographic getting assistance is the elderly. Must a 70 year old get a job at a drive-thru to satisfy you that he is not 'lazy'? What about the people who want to work but cannot find a job- like those put out of work by your stupid sequester? If they're not able to find a job, will it please your puritan work ethic if they go hungry in a land of plenty? And the ones who already are working- what more can they do? Go to Washington and lick your boots?
    I also find it highly ironic that a congress which seems to be chronically on vacation and cannot find the time to pass a single jobs bill or even a simply budget for themselves should get all self-righteous about the work ethic and footwear of hungry people. Some of them might be able to find a job that supports them IF you would do your job!
     Further, it is the height of hypocrisy for a party that wants to deny poor women access to contraception to refuse to feed their children when they are hungry.
    And hiding behind a man who said "Feed my lambs" to excuse turning your back on hungry people is wrong on so many levels that I am not even going to address it except to say~ Shame, shame, shame!

   In closing, please remember that you cannot judge a book by its cover, For instance, just looking at all of you with your nice suits and your luxurious homes, I would assume you are intelligent and honest people who care about the constitutional mandate to 'promote the general welfare'. Yet clearly you are none of those things.
   Once upon a time, America declared a 'war on poverty'. In 2013, the Republican party has declared a war on the poor. Your motto seems to be " Let 'em die: there's more for us that way!"

Sincerely-
     A caring democrat who probably pays more taxes (with a lot less whining!)  than you do.