Horse Latitudes

So it's done. The inauguration. The pomp, the circumstance, all that hailing to the Chief and Michelle's gorgeous yellow ensemble, Obama's steadied focus, the lump in your throat, the hope. It's here now. Like the day after Christmas when you stare at the tree all mucked up with tinsel and realize, oh, yeah, now life returns to normal and you're left to wonder if the tinsel will burn out the motor in the vacuum cleaner, if you're better off picking up the pieces one by one. This is it. The Horse Latitudes.

Or the My Pretty Pony Latitudes, whatever. The tide has turned, the seas are still, and now we must wait for the wind to pick up, for change. And I, for one, am ready, having already tossed a few horses overboard, watched as their big eyes bulged forward in fear, listened to the splash and then the sickening wet sound of the struggle. I am ready for a new America, for movement, for a country toward which I've been tacking endlessly back and forth for 36 years.

When the still sea conspires an armor

And her sullen and aborted

Currents breed tiny monsters,

True sailing is dead.

Awkward instant

And the first animal is jettisoned,

Legs furiously pumping

Their stiff green gallop,

And heads bob up

Poise

Delicate

Pause

Consent

In mute nostril agony

Carefully refined

And sealed over.

--The Doors