With the primaries just behind us and mask mandates continuing to lift, the rifts between us all seem very evident — Who will you support come November? Will you still wear that mask? What do you think of X, Y, or Z major issue? But looking overseas to Ukraine, we can see evidence of what it looks like when people from the same country come together despite all those other differences. What would it look like if we decided to do the same? That was the inspiration for this Typewriter Rodeo poem.
United
The rifts are huge —
Democrat vs. Republican
Right vs. left
Name-calling vs. taunting vs. trolling
It’s almost enough
To make you give up hope
Almost
Sometimes it takes
Something, or someone,
So beyond the pale
So past the ever-moving line
To turn us from our corners
And perhaps we can remember
When the Ukraine invasion
Is over
— no matter what the result —
Perhaps we can remember
How nearly everyone
Put divisions aside
To try and stop
A spreading darkness.
The sunflower
Always turns, however slowly,
Toward the light
Perhaps there is hope
That we can all
Still follow
Its lead.
Typewriter Rodeo airs each Friday on Texas Standard. Send us your ideas for a poem on 
