GS with a Line from Peter Kropotkin

Sean Thomas Dougherty

Can you hear it in the wind off the lake, or the
Mighty sparrow? No crow was ever hopeless
As it fake-limped the coyote from the carcass. Don’t
Listen to the foreman or the landlord, a word like revolt
Is not a word like wind, and yet because
The wind can rise to blow down any city just like a revolution.
Never forget how we broke the machines, what is
Was never made by owners with their papers, an
Agreement signed by whom?  The bossmen act
Against the pines, the wheat bowing its head, of
This we know: what wage they hand is never hope.

Sean Thomas Dougherty’s most recent books are Death Prefers the Minor Keys from BOA Editions, and The Dead are Everywhere Telling Us Things, winner of the 2021 Jacar Press Full Length Poetry Prize, selected by Jessica Jacobs and Nickole Brown. His book The Second O of Sorrow was winner of the Housatonic Book Award and cowinner of the Paterson Poetry Prize. He works as a long-term caregiver and Medtech along Lake Erie.