Ruth's Aria

for the notorious RBG

Because I was a hundred-year flower
the world was waiting to see bloom,

I unlatched the scabbard
for cutting away shadows from

decisions ill-made. I cut hackneyed,
hand-me-down, halftime rights

from the hands that held them, and I
returned them stitched back whole. Society

had raised me on baloney
and broken wishbones,

babel and busted platitudes,
on repeated, ruthless

galaxies of restraint. And I said, No
matter. I said, While everyone else was learning

Pig Latin, I was writing
a new alphabet, a new country, empathy’s

affidavit. While the world was burning
in history’s buildings, I was building

a door out of the fire. I saw that the law
was busy watering

weeds, so I drank rainwater and opera,
set my heart cycle to bloom. And I bloomed

and bloomed and bloomed. And left
a seed-spangled wake behind me.