Redux

A day of infamy, standing arm in arm with

Pearl Harbor, 9/11, the assassinations of Kennedy and King,

painful abscesses in historic memory.

January 6th,  replayed over and over;

windows shattered, walls breached, a frenzied mob.

Rioters in their red MAGA hats,

desecrating the very American flags they carried like lances,

fouling the hallowed halls of the symbolic fulcrum of our government.

Is that who we are as a nation, or was that day an aberration?

And despite the incontrovertible proof, the eyewitness truth,

the recollections of those who lived through it, injured Capitol police,

still blatant denial by many, even by seated congressmen.

They want you to believe January 6th was not a violent insurrection,

just a tour gone awry? I cannot comprehend this,

and fear the foundations of our democracy are being undermined.

Big lies about the legitimacy of the election still cultivated

like stubborn poisonous weeds you can't get rid of in your yard,

no matter how hard you try.

An undercurrent of extremism swirls like a deadly whirlpool

east and west, north and south

sucking people in to its hatemongering and lies.

Can we get past this stubborn virus too?