In Good Company

Gandhi is in my kitchen.

Barefoot in wrap around cloth, he sits cross-legged atop my kitchen table,

having removed the pot of geraniums before parking himself on my ruby red placemat.

He’s shifting his wire-rimmed glasses on his nose and awaiting my full attention.

Gandhi wants a pot roast.

While I don an apron and search for the crockpot, he regales me with tales of his march

to the sea – 200 miles to protest the Salt Act, how they burned their fingerprint cards en masse

fighting for Indians and against injustice, and then there were the prison years.

Gandhi takes a breath

with a glance of uncertainty in my direction and an ease at giving orders: Bay leaves, Turkish. Sea Salt of course. Rosemary fresh from the garden. Hennessy Cognac, two tablespoons no more. I comply. And we’re back to boycotts and hunger strikes, being thrown off a train. Not easy, resistance, he says and looks at me hard.

After he’s feasted, no fasting today, Gandhi has questions. About the Women’s March.

Non-violent? Millions of marchers? I nod wondering how he tunes in to MSNBC.

Throughout the world? For women’s rights? Human rights? I nod again. He claps his hands,

sops biscuits in broth, seems not to care about dribbles down his chin, and is gone.

Remaining – a business card peeps from geraniums, replaced with care.

Be the change that you wish to see in the world. All the best, Mahatma.

And on the back scribbled: The roast, my dear, could use some curry.

SUE ELLEN LOVEJOY resides in New England where she is the president of a national company and a social activist. Her poems have appeared in and received awards from the following journals and competitions: New Millennium, The MacGuffin, Tiger’s Eye, New Renaissance, The Mississippi Valley Poetry Contest, The Massachusetts State Poetry Contest, and others.