Poetry by Richard Fein

ANARCHIST

I’m armed with a straw between my finger and thumb.
I twirl it around, fidgeting like a cop with a nightstick.
I’ve acquired patience. I wait. I endure.

A sand dune endures for thousands of years,
while it’s passively blown by desert winds.
It’s pushed grain by grain for miles,
but remains the same sand dune.
And I also am pushed, and I also am swept away
and seem to offer no resistance.
But I have a single straw between my fingers.
It’s my armament.
If I spin it, I create the weakest of whirlwinds,
but one that’s strong enough if I wait, if I endure.

All that’s needed the right dromedary.
Anyone will do if it’s struggling on a dune,
not yet at the top but far enough
so that its eyes see almost beyond that dune,

and its feet totter but don’t yet buckle
under a load of straws pressing hard on its hump,
with hope alone sustaining it for the last few steps.
I will add my singular addition and hear its spine crack
and then down comes the mountain with the mountaineer,
for the grains beneath its hooves will have long been primed for an avalanche.

My eyes are keen for this proper camel,
my feet firmly planted on restless sand
and my patient fingers armed with that single straw.

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