The Sibyl of Our Divides

It’s 4 a.m. the morning after
Election Day 2004 and on TV
the news still teeters high
over an electoral divide.
Right now it’s Bush 254
Kerry 225 with Ohio way
too close to call along with
Iowa Michigan Wisconsin and
New Mexico. The decision
at this hour is still split
upon a sibyl’s witch-hair.
The tension of that vote is
palpable, even in this dark,
an invisible cable thick
as steel & labile as a
Norn’s eye-nerve as the
predictors & pundits
toss our future back and forth.
It seems the Republicans
have managed to eke
out just enough of the
country’s lily Bible Belt
to keep the White House;
oh, the fight’s still on,
but inside these walls
we’re skeptical about
our dreams and
have already comfited
ourselves to four more
years of Bushit in
the aging name of God.
Heavens, how did a
country’s heart and mind
come to be so split?
Surely She has something
to do with this, and
whether that’s benign or
deadly or irrelevant, she
surely whets the tooth
that set Carl Rove &
Michael Moore loose
on us, like dogs. Can an
electorate be witched
into blessing an incumbent
harm, howling half
the way? Apparently so,
but the other way is
equally hers, a wicker
man empty of means
burning a field raw.
Maybe it was never
a choice, just her means
to splurge divides,
our one and zero
mashed like knives
of destiny no one
cares to admit,
where no thrall
thrives without
infernal spoor,
and where no wave
which makes it
almost to shore
is mightier than
at its foaming crest
and strangest
when one stride
further it folds
and crashes
in a boom.
Oh darkly she
is laughing there,
astride all
George has won.