June 17, 2025

A note about this week’s piece: Sometimes (read: often), I don’t know where the next poem is going to come from, or what it is that I’m carrying inside of me that wants to be expressed. So I do what I call “entering through the side door.” I look for a prompt from somewhere else to get me started. In this week’s poem, I borrowed the title from this news article and this got me thinking about the protests and marches happening around the country. The one I attended one this past weekend was nearest where I live in mid-coast Maine, and while I stood in the crowd I noticed the sea of grey hair around me (my own included). Maine state has the oldest average population in the country, with a median age of 45. A quarter of the population is 65 and older. This poem found its legs somewhere between the headline I discovered, the experience I was having, and the long history of peaceful protests that’s preceded me.

wild chickens are taking over Miami

and a few thousand miles to the north, septuagenarians are gathering
at Post Office Square, bearing hand-painted signs and eco-
conscious water canisters. They have their sunblock on, have taken
their thyroid pills, have a phone call with the kids earmarked
for later this afternoon. In their gardens, the first peonies
are opening. In their living rooms, a small folding table
for impromptu canasta games. Retirement is a rotating series
of entertainments, occasionally interrupted by sore knees and dry
eyes, the shocking bill from the plumber (tariffs, he said) and,
you know, global warming. But today, they feel a fresh
whiff of optimism—a good night’s sleep might have done it,
or the surprise of cooler temperatures in the middle of June,
or the fact of grandchildren—and they’ve taken the streets
with a vigor reminiscent of collegiate sit-ins, where they drank
tepid coffee in thin paper cups, sprawled tensile limbs
across each other’s laps, shook jubilant fists into the stale
air and raged against the machine. Look at them, wiry-haired
and briefly spry, shaking posterboards above their heads,
clucking their dismay in the streets, sunhats bobbing
as a loudspeaker comes on to rally the crowd with gospel.
A breeze ripples the flagpoles cinematically and by the second
verse, everyone fuses into tune. “We are not afraid today,” they sing,
and swaying together in this field of so many tender, thin-skinned creatures,
they find themselves daring to believe it.