Terry and I participated in the No Kings Day rally in Potsdam this fall along with about a thousand of our neighbors. As we stood in front of the Roxy Theater, I noticed a woman behind us painting at an easel. What a delight to receive her finished work as a Christmas gift. It gives me an excuse to trot out that ten-dollar vocabulary word, ekphrastic, an adjective for a written piece that describes a work of art.
No Kings Day
I was born the year The Wild One came out. When the biker gang
comes to town, young Molly asks Johnny, “What are you rebelling
against.” “Whaddya got?” he replies. This painting reminds me.
A thousand people, no faces; a thousand signs, no word legible.
The buildings are anonymous blobs of color, no cars to cue the date.
You wouldn’t know that I was in the frame, or that it was Potsdam.
I could be at a Vietnam war protest, or the power line fight in 1970s,
or the Nuclear Freeze or the war in El Salvador or the wars in Iraq.
It could be gay rights or black lives, Roe v. Wade or climate change.
“There’s somethin’ happenin’ here. What it is ain’t exactly clear,”
as Buffalo Springfield sang. And that makes the painting timeless,
universal. The blob in the black hat that is me makes it personal.
I am surrounded by my fellow travelers; we are “the usual suspects”
who have marched and waved signs since childhood, patriots of some
yet-to-be-realized America, partisans of a future brighter than this.
We marched as well. As we gave been doing monthly and lately weekly here in Portland. Tear gas still sucks, only bullies need masks and it’s still the “usual suspects”. But now there are more of us. Grannies are telling their grandkids how to wash tear gas out of yourself and your clothes. The lessons get passed on.