I believed only air
stretched between the dogwood

and the barberry: another
thoughtless human assumption

sidetracking the best story
this furrow spider knew to spin.

And, trying to get the sticky
filament off my face, I must look,

to the neighbors, like someone
being attacked by his own nervous

system, a man conducting an orchestra
of bees. Or maybe it’s only the dance

of human history I’m reenacting:
caught in his own careless wreckage,

a man trying to extricate himself,
afraid to open his eyes.
~Jeff Worley from Lucky Talk

For a change, it is a relief the citizens of this country are waking up to clear election results. A majority of voters have mandated a new direction, in an attempt to turn this massive ship of a nation around.

Too often in recent history, the election results are uncertain the next day. We remain suspended in a sticky web of our own making for some time, dangling as the votes are recounted, rehashed, distrusted, and litigated…

Twenty-six years ago, I woke up not feeling very well after a long night of waiting for election results to come in. I thought it was from the tension of not knowing when the outcome would be finalized but no… It ended up being appendicitis — it was my 2000 post-election surgical solution to take my mind off the contest of Bush vs Gore.

It worked. I simply ceased to care about anything but my own healing. What was happening in the headlines became background noise.

This morning, I don’t need any such distraction. I will endeavor to keep myself out of the ER and the OR and just go about my day, watching our democracy in action.

For well over a decade, we the people have been caught in a sticky-wickety web, spread all over our faces. We’ve struggled to keep our eyes open to the reality of our own messy entrapment,

So today I am taking a few deep breaths and I hope you will too. And tomorrow and the next day.

And avoid radical surgery if we can.

Maybe this dance is something we can manage to do together — coordinated, cooperative, choreographed, and united —
rather than flailing about in a careless wreckage of human history.