POEM FOR CAMPAIGN WORKERS AFTER THE ELECTION
Sunset
will not wait for us
but comes as scheduled, win or lose.
I know you will not wait
but go forward
into your lives
even though
there is always the next campaign.
Pausing, I look from face to face
and know
we will never be together again
in the same way.
C2008 Deb Sirotkin Butler
(I wrote this first in 2006, and revised it in 2008. Win or Lose, we have the memories from our campaigns, and the “brothers and sisters in arms” from hard, honest campaigning. Take good care.)
Please share widely!
there is always that bitterweet feeling. Sometimes lingering ennui to kick yourself out of.
The hardest part is that you have to realign, in your mind, how the future will look. The vision and hope created in a campaign is what you fight for. It can take a while to get on board someone else’s vision.
In some ways, I am still working through, and grieving, the extreme shock I felt when the dream I had focused on John Edward’s articulated vision turned out to be a total fake and betrayal.
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p>I don’t have my full “zest and vigor” as a campaigner back, even yet.
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p>So I have to personally know someone – really know them, after that experience, not be “convinced by media” or something second hand like that.
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p>In Martha Coakley’s case, I really did get to know her in a particular fight, for example. It no longer is – at least for me – a litmus test of what a candidate says. Talk is too cheap. It is too easy to tell eager people what they want to hear, especially for a cynical narcissistic person.
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p>But, yes, grieving, letting go, refocusing take time and a certain kind of emotional space.
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p>Those I worked on the Edwards campaign with, who shared that same sense of betrayal, with some of them there is a real bond still, even though it is painful and bittersweet.
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p>But, like you, I do feel responsible for ourselves, our towns, our state, our country, in an almost fiduciary sense, so it is important to find a way to continue to try to make a positive difference.
and infuriating. Pagliuca got 12% of the vote. I would imagine mostly people who vote for advertisements and sports teams. Unbelievable.
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p>I agree about citizen responsibility. If only more people would get involved, truly involved. It would make a huge difference.
even though cappy lost i still made great relationships down at the office
This has three of the five hallmarks of bad poetry:
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p>1. no reason to be a poem rather than a sentence
2. jr high school-level emotional resonance
3. overdramatic and cliche “never” in the ending! (could be replaced in poems about other subjects by “always” “love” “single tear”)
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p> while it doesn’t have the other 2:
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p>4. the word “abyss”
5. reflections about the poet’s dog or cat
especially for someone who makes up words out of whole cloth in his comments like
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p>Palindrone
Pennmanship?
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p>Thanks for the poem Deb. My best old friends are ones I worked with on electoral and lobbying campaigns — win or lose. But winning is better for sure.
For example, are we as a state worse off because Ted Kennedy did not win the Democratic Nomination, and become President? Was he worse off? I do not think so.
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p>Your friend Mike Capuano has a fine career before him in the U.S. House of Representatives; how this campaign will impact his vision, and choice of legacy remains to be seen.
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p>While Alan Khazei was not nominated this time around, what remains to be seen is whether his appetite for politics was increased – and what use he makes of his considerable ability to find a niche and legacy in governance.
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p>Just a few thoughts as to how the passage of time may – or has – changed my view of what winning and losing mean.