Meditations on the Ballot

Suzanne Morris

October 27, 2024

From the safe harbor of my TV room

many miles away

I witness the domed roof of the famed

Tropicana Field Stadium

being torn to shreds by the howling winds 

of hurricane Milton

as the storm engulfs

Florida’s coastal communities

and massive tornados churn

even before

piles of potentially deadly debris 

can be cleared from

hurricane Helene that struck

just two weeks earlier

raging all the way from there

to the Appalachians,

those who survived in its wake

grieving for all who were lost and

looking out in shock on the bleak scene

of their houses and roads 

swallowed up by mountainous

flood waters

clothing, keepsakes, beds and dressers

tax returns, books, certificates of record– 

possessions once safe

within home walls

suddenly washed away.

How could we ask any voter who endured

one of these deadly storms– 

let alone, both– 

to wade through the wreckage

of their lives

and cast a ballot in the

Presidential election of 2024,

though we’ve been warned that

every single vote will count,

the survival of our democracy

hanging in the balance.

And I think how 

impregnable our democracy

has always seemed, yet, 

how fragile it really is

just one ballot after another, over

the life of our republic

sum total of the great overarching dome

that unites us.

A strong enough wind

could blow it away.

A native of Houston, Suzanne Morris has made her home in East Texas for nearly two decades.  Her poems have appeared in anthologies as well as online poetry journals, including The Texas Poetry Assignment, The New Verse News, The Pine Cone Review, and Stone Poetry Quarterly.