I’ve been thinking of the dead
and what they’d make
of the current events.
A black in the White House?
A woman as a secretary
but GIVING orders?
Fairies able to marry,
adopt and enact
their own distinct agendas?
Self-flushing toilets?
All would be unthinkable
to most of the dead.

Other uncarnate individuals,
perhaps of a more recent variety,
might well have undead heads spinning
just as they spin in graves.

My dad, dead at the start of the election cycle
could not have predicted
the news of this season
with all its vitriol and incivility
and the reversed trends to come.
He’d be chagrined,
for sure,
but I don’t think
were he alive
he would have been in much of a position
to change a thing.

Perhaps
that he’s not here to see it
is for the best.