O Idaho Senate with your flourishes
Your contemplative strength
How the House has teeth so much sharper
O Senate with your kind men and tough women
You strut as if these endings were your making
Why do you own acts so cruel?
For in your faces lies a sadness, in your eyes aquifers rise
The blood of a million and a half lives hangs around you
Will you listen to its cry?
O Senate your demons are the sly ones
Men with voices more self righteous than mine
My death here will not come from honored stabbing
But from from friendly fire
From cold flesh cut to keep me small
O Senate in your back-hall offices the lobbyists tarry
They covet your small numbers
Your love of fine wine and red meat
Let none come here to lead you into darkness
Your voice is that of orphans
Their quest is yours to represent
As a body of the legislature, Senate you demur to Gwartney and his Governor too often
The scent of moneyed scandals rise and yet you dally
Steel your bones, we've battles yet to fight
Your skin pales at my words, still you compliment my passion
I could stay to study at your gleaming heels
But my tolerance for pain fades with age
Aye, in your finance committee lie secret angels
In your gruff leaders hide impish saints
Faces of stone, you weep when the hero falters
Nay, I'd thought to leave but have grown fond now
Thorn in your steely side, such a view you offer
The space you give, the lines you've begged me learn
Should I miss the house? Yes
I shall wander East and visit
Gaze fondly at their casual dance and return
I'll run here to your pools of formal kindness
The body of thirty-five parts which together spin a brilliant, hard and haunted heart.