Dear Ruth

September 2, 2019

There is no privacy in this world
Although you’ve done your best to protect it

And even though sometimes it seems
Only darkness
Your pancreas our hope and medicine

Each treatment

No one knows the depth of your strength
When you speak truth to reason
As reason has been your mantra

For you too were marginalized
And overcame

Your optimism our balm as those of us
Who do not pray pray for you

This is not a contradiction
It’s just commonsense
Your other guide in all things constitutional

We need you

For when we laugh with you on Saturday Night
And as we follow your body’s betrayals
And rebounds

You are radiant in your radiation
Mind over matter

As perseverance is our gender’s greatest attribute
And you our supreme example

So unfair that after all you have given
To the simple equation of equality, the argument
That your body is your own to own and decide for

That your legacy should be constrained
By what we all have in common
Mortality

And yet

We hear you are back in the Supreme Court’s
Exercise room where you do justice lifting the weight
That a lifetime term of office requires

Your honor.

 

________

Yvonne Daley is a career journalist who returned to poetry for sanity in these difficult times. She lives in Vermont, still a sane place.

________

Ginsburg says she is ‘on my way to being very well’ after cancer treatment
[Washington Post]

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