The older I get, the more I’m conscious of ways very small things can make a change in the world. Tiny little things, but the world is made up of tiny matters, isn’t it?
— Sandra Cisneros
she said make it big, smash the system.
She was as impatient as a puppy
waiting to get outside to pee. I thought
she wanted bulldozers and hard hats now.
Change was the fun aunt my daughters
admired who bought them lingerie
when I was still gifting craft kits.
At the march to protest the Iraq war,
all three were furious, inconsolable.
But where are the people
we will stop from fighting?
my young daughters said.
When will you frickin’ DO
something? Change exploded.
And I thought she meant
PROTESTS, HUNGER STRIKES,
BOYCOTTS, CIVIL UNREST.
But lately I see her in her sweatpants
cleaning the toilet, cleansing the sink.
I used to see her with a megaphone
on the nightly news in my youth.
Now, she talks to her neighbors,
weeds the garden, speaks the unsayable,
and sings with a quiet force: really show
up, do the work, fall down, get back up.
Ellen Skilton
Ellen Skilton, 56, lives in Philadephia. She is a professor of education at Arcadia University who has researched the experiences of Cambodian refugees in the US and social change in educational settings. Her poetry has been featured in Cathexis Northwest Press, The Dillydoun Review, Quartet, and the Red Eft Review.