A Poem by Jeannine M. Pitas

September Aubade

I wake up and wash the dishes piling in my sink for days,
and I try to take deep breaths, to cast off these imaginary stones
fastened to back and shoulders, to look out big windows at crowns
of green-yellow leaves, to give thanks for this cloudless sky in the Season
of Creation. I sweep the kitchen floor and think of what my friend said
at the Labor Day bonfire, about how so many of us feel like we’re living
two lives: one where we brush our teeth and go to work and have parties,
another where we hear horrible stories about soldiers patrolling our capital
and mysterious cars parked outside Walmart and masked men seizing men
and women away. I put my rice and lentils to boil and step out to the garden
for some kale and tomatoes, and I try to replace doomscrolling with journaling.
There’s a need to find the point where Life 1 and Life 2 intersect. I sit and read
about Dante’s exile and think polarization has always been with us,
and I read Things Fall Apart and imagine Chinua Achebe picking up
the pieces of his grandparents’ world from before the British came, and I wonder
what pieces of us our grandchildren will pick through. Last Friday I gathered
with thirty others to pray outside the ICE detention center. Last Monday
I stayed for six hours at the hospital with my Afghani friend, who came here
in 2021 and doesn’t know if she can stay, and her newborn baby who was up
all night crying, almost as if she knew the world’s current state. I remember
Saint Teresa of Ávila, building monasteries by day and listening
for the voice of God at night. I remember Julian in her church-attached
room, declaring All will be well in the middle of a plague. Right now
the sky is brightening, and I notice an orange ladybug who snuck in
on a leaf of kale. I need to take her outside. Inside, the stew is boiling. I need
to pack it up and take my shower and get into my car and drive
to the classroom where my students are waiting
for someone to bring them good news.

Jeannine Pitas is a teacher, poet, scholar, freelance journalist, book reviewer, and the Spanish-English translator of several Latin American writers. Her translation of I Remember Nightfall by Uruguayan poet Marosa di Giorgio was shortlisted for the 2018 National Translation Award given by the American Literary Translators’ Association. A graduate of University of Toronto’s Centre for Comparative Literature, she currently lives in western Pennsylvania and teaches literature and writing at Saint Vincent College. Or/And, her second full-length collection of poetry, is available from Paraclete Press.

Image: Detail from Paul Cezanne, A Bend in the Road, 1900/1906