There Will Be Fireworks
Scraps from a notebook
Free Fireworks in the Park
Behind us, Cantonese spoons itself like soup between a family. A whirr of French, then the home language, a cushion of song, soft as candlelight from bright rooms whose open-curtained dinners start up warmly one by one like bonfires on a coastline. The lamplight paints us gold, like we’re its gods. A nine-year-old girl in brushed-cotton nightie stands on a council wheelie to see from her front path her dad (earring, rollup) having a beer with a friend. The sky is a well we are emerging from. Good-naturedly siphoned through the gates our twos and threes disperse like particles. Then density increases by degress. A mum only barely taller than her red-sweatshirted son: “It’s not just fireworks, trust me." The night’s as dark as it’s going to get. A brown-smudged blue, a muddy toddler’s coat and we, beneath it, watching the crane contraption, stomp our feet, and wait.
Boom!
In the US today it’s Election Night. In the UK today it’s Bonfire Night. There will be fireworks.
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Very moving poem. Thank you.
From here on the FarNorCal Redwood Coast, it is heartening to know that you and so many others are with us, here on the edge of the continent, and of history. All our work is done for now, and we too wait. By the time tomorrow dawns for you back east, we may know which way the struggle goes: into a rear-guard action to preserve what we have and prevent more losses, pushing on toward the next skirmish, two long, dark years from now; or pressing forward into a green new future with much to do, but with the courage of victory and the vindication of history at our backs.
Guy Fawkes day… a perfect metaphor for the happenings in the States…
😎😎