"There Are Ample Reasons to Despair"

This week, Trump has taken us all (and that means the whole world!) down the rabbit hole of his worsening dementia with expansive and catastrophic firings, private consultations with conspiracy theorists, dismissal of concerns about everyday citizens and investors, and nonsensical ramblings about old-fashioned vocabulary like the word, “groceries.”

Democrats and some Republicans are scrambling to figure out a way to stop the bleeding, with Congress and the courts realizing what little power they have over a rogue President whose cronies have rigged the system and ignore the rule of law.

This week’s chaotic tariff announcements based on astoundingly bogus calculations.

All this as Cory Booker stood and spoke for 25 hours to remind us of what statesmanship and patriotism look like — thoughts for a poem on another day— and while so many friends of mine deal with the dementia of family members. The parallel of their lives and our national experience was too obvious to ignore.

My Poet with a Press Pass poem for today is “There Is Ample Reason for Despair,” a phrase taken from Robert Reich’s FB post today. Here is the poem. Let me know what you think!

THERE IS AMPLE REASON FOR DESPAIR

A friend is caring for her father
as he slips away into senility.
Every day is another sign of absence
of the dad of breakfasts-for-supper
and suppers at the ballpark,
summer beach trips and fall hikes.

Lately, she has given up
trying to help him remember
what he ate this morning
and secretly hidden his phone,
so he can’t sell the family farm
to a caller from Fort Worth.

One day last week, he insisted
he had figured out how
to make money without people,
using a genius invention
that would do all the work—
if she would just help him login.

Instead, now she just sits with him
and listens to his sleepy mumbling,
daydreams in which he is still
suave and handsome and in
charge of his privileged life,
though, actually, he never was.

written by Anne McCrady