Poetry We Can Believe In

Rodney Holman, poet and all around reneissance man, sent us this poem in honor of the election:

HOPE, ON THE WING by Rodney Holman
a poem-in-progress, inaugurating hope

Mine is a voice long thought to have been silenced.
Mine are the words which no longer echo in the skulls of our children.
Mine was a world, it is said, which has long since fallen to dust.
Mine are the forebears who long ago marched into the desert of nonexistence.
Or so it is said.
I have heard your disconsolate cries:

"We can no longer recite those primeval sounds
We cannot recollect an oral tradition--
The voices, the words, the deeds, the longings of our progenitors.
Unwritten, they were but spores on a passing wind,
Fleeting friends whose wake is our constant and only companion
Long dead and long gone and long lost to memory."

Take heart my friends
For we are perennials.
We are here today to hear anew.
Today we commit to recoup, recall, recount.
We converge here along an ancestral line of force--
This is an unbroken line.

Our heritage, our humanity, our democracy need not be lost:
This battered but enduring tradition is an inalienable feature of our
universe—
No matter how the strut of the tyrant or the grasp of the greedy may
suppress it
This tradition takes harbor in and re-emerges from within the soul.
Therein, we are made hopeful, we are emboldened, we are guided
We are reminded of who we are.
We hope and we dream because we must and because—yes—we can
There is much to communicate and much to redeem:

Look anew with your eyes and hearts then
Upon those standing next to you
Can you sense what is being transmitted from soul to soul?
It is unacceptable and un-American to stand mute and unfeeling
When a human soul cries out to you in longing:

"I followed the long string--the longing string
All along this Earth
I have sought your response.

Open
Open up
This outpouring must be received...
Will I hear nothing?

Come
Stand here
This artesian flow seeks its steward...
Will no one come?

This heart requires some encouragement
Though love flows from it daily.
This moist earth teems with seed-dreams
Yet to open.

I have waited a lifetime for this moment:
I can feel your heartbeats from here
I can see myself in your eyes
I can tell that my hope is yours."

As with any gift so freely offered...
Take it!
Take wing.

***

We're almost there, folks. Volunteer, phone bank, talk to your undecided friends. Travel, if you can. We're close to getting the change this country needs.