Building a Raft
Vincent Hostak
July 3, 2022
I’m listening to the murmurings of grieving friends
while the AC hums then grinds out a decree:
Every day grows hotter than the one before.
The thermostat is failing.
I read somewhere
when the land is hotter
water-laden air cries for release.
My mind holds firm to mad-dream logic
imagines this machine can always do the work
conjuring cool relief in a manner protective,
affirmative, just, even kind.
My friends gather storm felled timbers
strip canvas off their curtains and treasured art
braid rope from nettles.
The tone of everything has changed
it is the song of survival and escape
Sanction these sails each
Blessings for worthiness on the Seas.
We were here to build a country
to fashion cities out of ash
make them beautiful
astonish everyone each time they held
against invasions of wind and dust,
water and bust.
If they fell once or more
like Detroit, Chicago, New Orleans, Houston
we took another turn together to help them stand.
Deliberations, decisions pre-authorized
a leak, a puddle accrues
across the hottest week on record in D.C.
in thick water-laden air.
Persons in Robes, Men with Guns
If it please the Court,
what is the difference between these assemblies
when the endgame of both becomes
disfigure Reason
delegate possession of Her Beloved
Autonomous Body
to the rapist
to the hungry lions
and their beguiled keepers?
Even here in the Known Safe Zone?
I’m leaning into this question
Fight or Flight
when the past seems so much less
a beacon for the future
and there is so much to fear in the present.
On a day again too hot to think my clearest:
Stay, struggle with Her
They, Them, All our Dearest?
How do we escape from a void?
We were here to build a country.
My friends now tell me
for their safety of their lives
we must build a raft.
Vincent Hostak is a writer and media producer from Texas now living near the Front Range of Colorado south of Denver. His recently published poems are found in the journals Sonder Midwest and the Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas and as a contributor to the TPA. He writes & produces the podcast: Crossings-the Refugee Experience in America.
