American Bittern

The bird that bellows like a bull,      
butitaurus, the American bittern,    
planted its stout body in my marshy
pasture, craned its neck up to the setting sun, 
and thunder-pumped a deep, resonant call.      

I’d been reading the bad news from Washington,
democracy’s utter demolition, all week, so by Friday,
I was ready for the bittern’s prolonged anguish,  
letting it drift into what we used to call the TGIF 
twilight and leak into the upper atmosphere,

releasing our work-week fatigue and bitterness 
into Friday night, the beginning of le weekend,      
as the French love to call it, loving the sparkly
borrowings of decadence and joie de vivre.

But all of that was gone now. The French, for once,
rightly despised us, as did so much of the Continent,
for what we were doing to them, and to ourselves,
and there were even rumors they’d demanded
the return of Lady Liberty, her original copper now

oxidized green and casting what could only be 
construed as a sardonic glance toward Ellis Island.
Given the corrosive climate in America, she’d turned 
unrelentingly greener, her gaze more caustic, turning     
immigrant boats in the harbor away from a port of entry.

All of that was gone now. The American bittern
stretched its neck and bellowed one last pantomime
of daylight’s undoing. Friday night was going
to be as bleak as any other night of the week,
the bars and parties filled with cynicism and despair

that replaced the tinselly laughter and twinkling
repartee of year’s past. Maybe it was better this way,
and maybe it wasn’t, that a new soberness
had descended on all we did, as if we’d inherited
the demeanor of Eastern European literati

who’d fled their homelands to take university posts
here in America and destabilize our faculty parties
with their sideways smiles and caustic rejoinders
to the upbeat, forward thrust of American optimism,
not that we natives were naive, but there was something

in our own cynicism that was still untarnished, untainted
by a dictator, wrecking crew, and quick, bullish dismantling
of democracy that made the foundations quake
and the pillars holding up the edifice of the old world 
crumble until only the faux Ionian columns were left,

unstable as the ancient Athenian ideas of Cleisthenes
that had shaped demokratia. By now, it was deep 
into Friday night, and we were still deciding between
the Greek or French restaurant, both of which we knew
would be free of ambient echoes that make conversation

difficult, though most likely, we’d sit and eat tonight quietly, 
mostly lost in our own thoughts, which, given the week’s 
unremittingly downbeat news, would cause an acidic
response to whatever immigrant food we ate, 
as well as a toxic seep into our peace of mind,

so our thoughts would hardly be worth sharing, 
unless perhaps, we brightened, momentarily 
at the memory of the American bittern,
its note of defiance in the marshy pasture    
as it uttered its desolate cry.