Onward and Upward!

The day after the midterms, I read the news in Heathrow Airport en route to Washington DC. One word suffices (though the font too small for the occasion) to express my feelings: 

 

YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Should I elaborate? If so, always best to turn to the poets and here is Sheenagh Pugh’s lovely poem that gathers everything I—and millions of Americans—are feeling:

 

Sometimes things don't go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail.
Sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war,
elect an honest man, decide they care
enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best intentions do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen; may it happen for you.

 

              Sheenagh Pugh

 

It happened for us. But not just by the grace of the gods. By the hard work and determination of all those—Democratic politicians, social justice advocates, voters and people just fed up with the meanness and cruelty— to get out and make the needed change. Now the real work can begin. Ride on the momentum and overturn all that has tried to bring our democracy down and get serious about the 25^th Amendment and restore the Supreme Court and—well, it’s a long, long list. 

As jazz musician Billy Starhorn liked to say: "Onward and upward!"