The win you lost

(A candidate’s mom’s monosyllabic advice)

By Emmanuelle

THE polls had long been closed and cleared. The rooms now wait for real kids, in socks, and shorts and hair tied back in pig-tails. We had hailed and grasped the hands of those who won; we had hugged and shed tears with those who lost.

Now, May is soon past, and June is next day too soon. The sun still stuns, but now there are more new fires in the sky. These fires, they blaze! They flare, they growl their angst as the heat rubs the cold out of ice. And these fires bring the rain down. When rain pours, in short or long bursts, we drown our feet in the wet. Just as soon, we dry them in the sand of what was once mud.

But look close, look up. There, a dry bark turns to green, a leaf buds. It shoots a stretch or two. The tree starts to live! Then, all too glum, a new stem crusts and scabs as the sun soar to noon. Fret not, fret not, tweet the birds. Comes the rain comes the night, the just dried heals.

And so life goes on. From black to brown to gold to green. Then it fades back to brown. A flash of white, then black to black. One does not stay not changed, not moved from morn to dark. One shifts, one turns, one sleeps, one wakes, one laughs, one cries, one breathes, one stops.

A few of us, like the birds, shall tweet to lead, but most will be led. With a turn of the clock, one or a few of the led may be the one or the few who leads.

In the fight to lead, not all shall win. No two shall tweet in one twig, same space.

One must have done good, one must have done right, to have won hearts, and the polls, this time.  Or a lot of times. And to have lost the polls does not mean one had been bad. One must not have shown much of what is good in his heart. One must have tried hard to do right, but the time and the place must have been not so right. And thus, the fight is lost to the one who won.

In a fight, one aims for the prize of a rose. A rose is not all rose. The rest of it is thorns.

The one who won holds the rose. And he holds her, and her thorns, for three short long years.

To you who lost, you have the choice and the chance to fight the good fight three years from now. Today and the next days and years, you rest. You heal. You pray.

One does not rage. And turns what is sad to mad.

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