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We Are the Ones We've Been Waiting For: Poems for Activists and Advocates

This collection includes harsh and violent imagery. You might think it needs a content warning. Yes, because the world we live in needs a content warning. Any day, every day, any of us might encounter harm, violence, the ending of our lives bit by polluting bit or all at once in the impact of a vehicle or the firing of a gun. Some of us move through the world with identities that increase the odds that we'll experience these as part of our everyday reality, one of the many injustices that activists and advocates speak out against.

This collection could keep growing. I compiled it the way I do all of my posts pointing people to poetry, by adding a link as I encountered a piece in my morning poetry reading that fit into this theme. 

At some point as the collection grew I got the book Poetry of Presence II: More Mindfulness Poems. I wanted it because I loved the first Poetry of Presence, not realizing that for this second volume editors Phyllis Cole-Dai and Ruby R. Wilson had also felt the calling to collect poetry that speaks to the urgency of our times. As they wrote in the introduction to describe their wonderful selections,

"Many poems in this volume therefore delve into varieties of suffering: woundedness, illness, loss, and death; prejudice, bigotry, injustice; violence and war . . . a host of tough stuff that, frankly, most of us would rather not deal with.

"But mindfulness poetry has the potential to crack open that tough stuff—one stanza, one line, even one word at a time. Enough light escapes through those cracks that we can edge forward when it gets dark or, if we need to, stay put a while and catch our bearings. By that light, we may begin to see more clearly and intuit more wisely how to be whoever we need to be, to go wherever we need to go, to do whatever we need to do. We're led more directly into the heart of the question that Ada Limón sets forth in the epigraph: 'What is it to go to a We from an I?'"

These words and those of the poets in the book and below remind, inspire, humble, and amaze me because poets can take these horrors and create such startling beauty, roses amidst the wounding thorns. 

A quotation by poet, peace activist and priest Fr. Daniel Berrigan fits here. I don't know which of his poems or writings it might be from; if you have the citation please share in the comments.

"This occurred to me, that faith is prose and love is music and hope is poetry." - Daniel Berrigan

What do you pledge, what actions are you already taking, to undo or prevent harms to each other and to bring justice and beauty to the world? How are you creating hope and going toward a We?

"Protest" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox

To sin by silence, when we should protest,
Makes cowards out of men. The human race
Has climbed on protest. 

"The World We Want Is Us" by Alice Walker

Yes, we are the 99%
all of us
refusing to forget
each other
no matter, in our hunger, what crumbs
are dropped by
the 1%.

"Of History and Hope" by Miller Williams

But where are we going to be, and why, and who?
The disenfranchised dead want to know.
We mean to be the people we meant to be,
to keep on going where we meant to go.

"V'ahavta" by Aurora Levins Morales

imagine winning.  This is your sacred task.
This is your power. Imagine
every detail of winning, the exact smell of the summer streets
in which no one has been shot, the muscles you have never
unclenched from worry, gone soft as newborn skin,
the sparkling taste of food when we know
that no one on earth is hungry,

"Postscript" by Marie Howe

We took of earth and took and took, and the earth
seemed not to mind

until one of our daughters shouted: it was right
in front of you, right in front of your eyes

and you didn’t see.

"The Fallen Protestor's Song" by Mohja Kahf

So when you write a word
on a wall for all to see
and it doesn’t have to be in code,
and no one breaks the hand that drew it,
when freedom is no longer treated like a narcotic,
dosed in hidden little baggies only for the few,
but becomes like photosynthesis in plants,
processing light in every leaf,

"Blackbirds" by Julie Cadwallader-Staub

when, every now and then, mercy and tenderness triumph in our lives
and when, even more rarely, we manage to unite and move together
toward a common good,

we can think to ourselves:

ah yes, this is how it's meant to be.

"Democracy" by Langston Hughes

I tire so of hearing people say,
Let things take their course.
Tomorrow is another day.
I do not need my freedom when I’m dead.
I cannot live on tomorrow’s bread.

"I Believe in Living" by Assata Shakur

i have been locked by the lawless.
Handcuffed by the haters.
Gagged by the greedy.
And, if i know anything at all,
it’s that a wall is just a wall
and nothing more at all.
It can be broken down.

"Tired" by Cleo Wade

I was tired
of looking at the world as one big mess
so I decided
to start cleaning it up

"A Brave and Startling Truth" by Maya Angelou

We, this people, on a small and lonely planet
Traveling through casual space
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns
To a destination where all signs tell us
It is possible and imperative that we learn
A brave and startling truth

"How Sweet It Is" by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

When I lose faith
that my smallest actions
make a difference,
let me remember myself as one of millions,

"Gate A-4" by Naomi Shihab Nye

And I looked around that gate of late and weary ones and I thought, This
is the world I want to live in. The shared world.

"Revenge" by Elisa Chavez

We know everything we do is so the kids after us
will be able to follow something towards safety;
what can I call us but lighthouse,

"For Those Who Would Govern" by Joy Harjo

First question: Can you first govern yourself?

Second question: What is the state of your own household?

Third question: Do you have a proven record of community service and compassionate acts?

"The Poems We Do Not Want to Write" by Maya Stein

The poems we do not want to write have the words “surveillance video” in them. Also,
”automatic weapon” and “body camera footage” and “assailant” and “victims.” 

"Breathe" by Lynn Ungar 

Just breathe, the wind insisted.

Easy for you to say, if the weight of
injustice is not wrapped around your throat,
cutting off all air.

Photograph of blue camas flowers in a grassy area. They bear multiple flowers on a stalk, with 6 slender purplish-blue petals radiating from small yellow centers

I chose this image of camas flowers in bloom to close this collection because I grew up in a part of the Pacific Northwest where this plant formed a staple food for the tribes that lived in and moved through the area. As a child I wasn't taught the real history of these mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, children and cousins and all their relations. I was taught only their history as viewed through the eyes of people like Meriweather Lewis and William Clark, for whom my hometown of Lewiston, Idaho, and the neighboring town across the Snake River, Clarkston, Washington, were named. As an adult I have sought ways to learn the missing and deliberately omitted histories that underpin today's economy, cultures, and the forms of privilege I hold. In my work and the ways I give time and money I seek to utilize that privilege to rebalance the systems we all inherited, to work for justice and a better world for all.

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