October 12, 2026

...by which I mean Columbus.

Still appearing - the same show every year! get your tickets now! on the Google calendar as Columbus Day / Indigenous Peoples Day.

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Some years ago, in Spain, one day in Sevilla, a poem rose, "Why did Europeans kill Indians? why did they come from so far away just to kill their curiosity? But their journey haunts me" - because I have always longed to go off to sea.

I would have signed up right there - would have answered that famous possibly-probably-made-up story about how Shackleton wrote an ad for sailors with no hope of success to show up for the Endurance, just for the effin’ adventure of it!

So I wrote this poem, then and there in Sevilla. It came from seeing a plaque in Cadiz commemorating señor C, and from a dream writing workshop I had done the week before in which we were asked to say out loud a line you wouldn't really say out loud and that "Why" line appeared.

Recently I recorded the poem, you can hear it here.

Or read it here on Versopolis Poetry Expo where it was published last year.

Also,! can you imagine this is an also! - but yes, also! what to say about live streamed executions or botched ones?

I cannot make sense of it, and I will not try.

I must believe in the revolution, rising one by one in each of us as we live this numbing livid battle to stay sane, to dream, to love, to care for our neighbors and keep our tenderness close.

for now

The finches flutter at the feeder.

The sun comes out and one whole side of the juniper is lit.

How green it is from recent rain.

I walk into the shade of the wall under the solace of the apricot tree.

Here is the datura too, with its white trumpet flowers that could fell me in one swoop if I bit it.

Suddenly - an army of pigeons.

The finches disperse in a quarrel of sound.

A branch of an unknown plant, which might be a honeysuckle, moves in a slant of breeze and stops.

It leans over the grass.

It has its own language, its own song, its own way of endearing itself to the green, to the sky and for this moment, it is enough to lay my eyes on it.

for now

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in solidarity

Shebana

write me at info@shebanacoelho.com

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Shebana Coelho

-wrote this about tyrants and animals and starry starry future rivers

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