How will we celebrate the 4th of July this year? How can we possibly celebrate the 4th of July this year? Certainly, undoubtedly, the still-raging pandemic will curtail the crowds of revelers: No traditional parades, free-wheeling backyard barbeques, or jam-packed community fireworks displays. But what if COVID-19 had never reached our shores? For some of us, the holiday always has been fraught. For others, long-held assumptions about just whose independence we have been celebrating all these years have been suddenly jolted loose. This month’s poem quietly but powerfully offers a different patriotic path, one marked not by the bombast of a Roman candle but by the flow of civic contemplation.

Siphon

by Trisha Knudsen

It is late afternoon on a Friday and I feel a pull

to get home before rush hour traffic begins in earnest.

After a lovely lunch and a ride around town,

I am instead cuddled up under a warm blanket

on a friend’s cozy couch in her beautiful house.

We’re having a pleasant conversation about kids

and grandkids, work, health, aging parents

and squirrels at the bird feeder. We are catching up,

having missed each other for what seems like months.

Without warning, the talk turns to the various stresses

regarding the state of the world and the muddying

of our dear country, and the many ills and missteps

that have led us here at the hands of men

whose only true intent is amassing personal gain

and a flagrant disregard for the welfare of her citizens.

It is at this moment that my brain explodes.

My opinions and politics and even my faith remain,

at most times, silent within me in the public arena.

There are too many people to potentially offend.

Too many issues for which my answers feel inadequate,

my knowledge lacking in detail, for me to speak

with any authority. I have the conviction,

but no heart for hurting others with my words.

My friend is of the same mind.

But this afternoon in her living room,

our truth spills out between us.

It is as though a siphon has been placed

against our temples as a sort of release valve

for all we have been contemplating.

All we have been swallowing down

for these last few years which is allowing

all manner of words unfit for public consumption

to advance from cranium to mandible to tongue.

One thought, then another, and another.

An exodus of all that we can no longer hold.

Trisha Knudsen has been writing poetry for 45 years. A retired teacher of special needs and gifted children, Trisha is most recently the creator and owner of RetreatQuest, a business offering creative arts and writing workshops and retreats for women, with the hope of reintroducing them to their inner artists. Though the business is on hold for now, you can find her at www.retreatquest.com. In her spare time, Trisha enjoys playing with her three young grandchildren, writing and reading poetry, creating art and singing with her husband, Phil. Feel free to reach her at trisha@retreatquest.com.