Supermarket of the Last Day of America

 for Ruth Bader Ginsburg

     Adapted from “Supermarket in California,” by Allen Ginsberg

 

What thoughts I have of you tonight, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, as I walk down the abandoned streets in the haze of smoke from distant fires with a heart so full I cannot look up to find the moon.

    In my pandemic fatigue, I am searching for small images—not store-bought nor meme-able nor enumerable, just one tender hope.

    What fall leaves and what shadows, but no families out to dinners nor students filling the bars on a vacant 2^nd street nor even, it seems, old poets, whose words feel so far away.

    But I saw you, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, old Jewish prophet, captured in the blue lights of social media, though I’m trying to avoid my phone.

    Do I need to ask these questions: should I walk ‘til dawn comes? What price tomorrow? If there is a heaven, then shouldn’t we abandon so cruel a God?

    I wander on, beneath a falling evening, followed in my mind by the faces I don’t see in windows—

    We live each day in a penumbra, but maybe somewhere back a ways we walked together through the last edge of outer dark.

   

    Where do we go now, Ruth Bader Ginsburg? There is no use in explaining—we know which way their mendacity turns tonight.

    (I rest in a park named after the people we stole this land from and feel absurd.)

    Walk with me, feisty lady? In darkest darkness, I don’t know what to do to carry on.

    Can you remind me of that lost America, or was there truly no epoch in this tattered history to draw aspiration from?

    Ah, dear soul bearer, icon, hero--courage teacher. Do you think we can reach a tomorrow after Charon poles us through these fires or will we drink the water of Lethe to forget these depths of pain.