I’m too trodden to be an activist.

did all that marching stuff when I was a kid:

ban the bomb, levitate the Pentagon, Fidel forever.

Now I have baddish ankles & lack bravado,

should just doze and dream of deathless breath.

But then the fucking world does something that makes me mad

like Russia invades the Ukraine

so even though I should tend my own garden

in these fattish years

I find myself writing checks

and letters to the editor

watching the news

shouting heartfelt in a rowdy crowd at the embassy,

one of those wrinkled protestors

with a throwaway life

ready to kneel in front of a tank.