Second Coming No. 215 — August 22, 2025

A poem-a-day protest against the threat posed to our democracy by Donald Trump and his fascist regime

Nancy Flynn
Another Catalog of the Ending

I clip the hostas, deadhead
mums, empty a gutter of
broken twigs, here in these days
of diminishing light, hours
with a symphony—foghorns
on the river, blasts from freight
a mile down this settlement
hill where there once grew orchards
of peaches and pears.
                                       I wish
I could resurrect some faith,
find courage in a raked-up
pile of leaves, uncover words
to help me declaim what’s gone,
who’s falling, what’s lost.
                                       Instead,
I falter, flail, fail. The rains
are returning any day,
downpour and soon, stormy this
future I long ago tried
to divine. I was so wrong.
A fool and stupidly naïve. The cruelty
is their point, time and time again.

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Nancy Flynn is the author of the poetry collection Every Door Recklessly Ajar (Cayuga Lake Books, 2015) as well as of the chapbooks Great Hunger (Anchor & Plume, 2016), Eternity a Coal’s Throw (Burning River Press, 2012) and The Hours of Us (Finishing Line Press, 2007). Her poems have appeared in Poemeleon, Verseweavers, Curio Poetry, Halfway Down the Stairs, Fence, and other journals, as well as in the anthology From the Finger Lakes (Cayuga Lake Books, 2019). Flynn holds a B.A. from Cornell University and an M.A. in English from Binghamton University. A former university administrator, she lives in Portland, Oregon.

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