Challenge: Write a political sonnet

Streak, Day 1 again

This is Emily Writes Back, a newsletter for the brilliant people, by Emily Sanders Hopkins.

Henmi Takashi, Rain in Yotsuya-Mistuke, 1930, via Public Domain Review

Shout Into the Wind

One more casualty of Trump to add
is all the poets frozen in their tracks
as on a road, tornado at their backs.
Run! No, stay! But their heads are strangely empty.

The storm is conical, mercurial, and wild enough
to lift a cow or snatch a child whose name is lost in transit. 
You cannot knife a gale or shoot the shit,
charge a squall, or shame a raging tempest. 

Standing there, the poet wonders what's the point of rhyme?
Can a "confetti-colored dogwood" save a life?
The problem isn't poems we didn't write
(unwritten poems cause no trouble ever),

it's the castles we're not about to storm
as we don't believe that storming is a right. 

Dear Reader,

You are so patient, so kind! I have been gagged and bound by a wringing of the hands over recent constitutional travesties, while also quieted by road trips to see beloved friends and gorgeous Storm King.

Our daughter at Storm King with a red metal sculpture.

You saw me break my daily writing streak, and you thought to yourself, “She must have run into a block. Totally understandable these days. And anyway, I get enough mail without her.”

Even you write in lilting, poetic meter. Interesting! Well, that will make it all the easier for you to write a political sonnet using weather as a central metaphor, and share it with us in the comments, if you are so kind. I can’t wait to read what you come up with!

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Note: I am writing daily as part of my “Go the Distance for Hospicare” fundraising campaign. Check it out.