A Haiku for Inauguration Day: Blessing and Promise and Prayer

I woke up on this inauguration day feeling just exhausted.  It's a different kind of exhaustion, in some ways.  My eyes feel dried out, my feet ache, and I'd like to sleep for a few days.  Actually, that's not true--I'd like to be in a different place where I don't feel the chores calling my name.  I'd like to be in a place where someone else has done the cleaning and will do the cleaning when I leave, and I'd like to know that person is paid a good wage.  I'd like to be in this place with good books, and I'd like the weather gods to know what I prefer from hour to hour and to deliver that.  I want a stack of books and a manuscript that's going well.  And because I know that at some point I'll feel lonely, but I won't know exactly when loneliness will strike, I'd like friends and family nearby with moods coordinated to mine.

In short, I yearn for a magical place that doesn't exist.

I thought I would wake up in a different emotional space.  I imagine that by the end of the day, I will have journeyed to many emotional spaces.  This year, I may make an effort to watch the inauguration.  I don't always, but this year feels historic in more ways than one.

I'm thinking of past inauguration days.  I have a vague memory of watching the first Clinton inauguration in 1993.  He was the first presidential candidate for whom I voted who won, but I also wanted to watch Maya Angelou.  My spouse was recovering from back surgery in 2013, so we watched the second Obama inauguration.  We also watched the first Obama inauguration.

This inauguration seems momentous in that we'll see a woman vice president.   I realize that other countries have actually voted to let women run the show, and maybe we'll get there some day.  For now, I'll take any steps towards equality that I can get, while at the same time, I'll let myself feel sorrow over the slow pace.

I'm also taking delight in Biden's slow pace towards this goal.  I'm collecting stories of late bloomers, and his story certainly demonstrates a very slow blooming.  But he's not just been sitting around, waiting for his chance to come.  This Joe Biden is very different than the Joe Biden who ran for president in 1987.  I'm hoping that he'll finally have a chance to use all his skills and talents.

This morning, I started a poem that I hope to develop as the week goes on.  This line delighted me:  complaint, incantation, or curse.  I thought about using it in a haiku for Inauguration Day.

But as I was running this morning, a different set of lines came to me:

High noon swearing in

Blessing and promise and prayer

Hinge of history