July 4th and a poem

Happy 4th

This ATC is called peace and as we celebrate the 4th I feel so blessed to enjoy the freedom that we have in this country. Alarmed as I may get over the war and the transgressions that this administration seems to gallantly tred over our constitution I am grateful that as a woman I can vote, practice the faith of my choice and have the right to make choices over my body, at least at this point.
On another note, I have learned I have won a prize for one of my poems in a small local competition. Does that make me a prize-winning poet? Wheeeee! I may have posted this before but here is the last revision that won:

Deductible not Met
All I wanted was a postcard, not a drama.
I’m in it now, reluctant player
waiting for my turn to pay.
“$362.43”, speaks the pharmacist from behind the counter.
Tremors run through the tiny wrinkled body standing right in front of me
as she struggles with her wallet in a worn and ancient bag.
“Before, I paid only $20.”
“Deductible not met” replies a firm authority.
“That can’t be true,” she says,
“Give me back my paper. I’ll take it some place else.”
“Sorry, can’t do that,” he says,
“It’s in our system now, can’t be removed.”
Filled with empathy and anger,
I want to jump up on the counter,
scream and holler, call it wrong, wrong, wrong,
then pay her crazy bill.
But I don’t.
“I don’t have that much money, I need the medicine today,” she says.
Just give me back my prescription. “
He shakes a no, looks beyond her shrinking form.
“Next, please.”
Her hand falls limply to her side; she turns and walks away.
.
“Don’t make a scene, don’t interfere,
not much time to stay, really not my business,” I tell myself.
“Hell’s bells,” says the other voice,
“Someone needs to speak, to stand against injustice.”
My tourist self takes over, wrapped in a cloak of guilt,
walks toward my family waiting in the car
but I never, ever forget this old woman.