Melissa Rendlen
We March
Women marched on Washington
more than five hundred thousand members strong.
You may have heard.
My eldest, Marietta and I were there.
We marched five days after her sister’s wedding,
in Texas.
Marietta flew to home to Seattle on Tuesday, Chicago on Wednesday.
I didn’t go home, flew to Chicago and met her there,
We hopped a train at six pm, Chicago to DC.
There were Trump hats on the train, but more pink pussy hats on board.
A picture of all pink hatted in the observation car, published in the New York Times.
We stayed in Pentagon City, twenty minutes on Metro to the Mall.
At least it was on the 20th…
That day we went to the Smithsonian.
Saturday morning the Metro station swarming.
Signs of all sizes, pink hats, old women, young women, gay guys, straight guys,
mothers, fathers, daughters and sons.
Forty minutes just to board, three hours more to the mall.
From every direction pink tentacles undulating toward Third and Independence Ave.
Joy danced across the air, bounced from breast to breast, circled around and lifted you off the ground.
We wove and dove through ever tightening crowds until we could move no more.
We never saw the stage, couldn’t understand the loud speaker, but stood for hours
packed together
singing, chanting, chatting.
A six year old on her daddy’s shoulders, held her homemade unicorn sign that said girl power.
Every direction all she could see was people shoulder to shoulder, front to back, sharing the cel-ebration.
Black, white, Hispanic, Muslim, Christian, Jew, old, young happy in our collective purpose.
A we with people on every continent, including Antarctica’s entire population.
All of us just wanted to say:
Love is love
Black lives matter
Climate change is real
Immigrants make America Great
Women’s rights are human rights.
Melissa Rendlen is a 66 year old poet physician, recently returned to her love of writing. She was a Tupelo Press 30/30 Project poet, received Honorable Mention with her first attempt at a chapbook in Concrete Wolf’s chapbook contest, and has had poems in GFT: Press, Still Crazy, Ink in Thirds, L’emphemere, and Writing Raw.
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