Eight Minutes and Forty Six Seconds on June Twelfth, Two Thousand Twenty
#15 of poetry
This was written when the title says. I wouldn't repost it, but I no longer have access to where it was posted, have no idea it's still there, and the whole point of it is to be somewhere.
The rain continues. No thunder dares ring.
No winds howl. All is silence, save the sound
Of distant trucks down on the interstate.
I tell myself, pretend it is the sea
That all this rain, perhaps, will wash into.
And I remain in silence. What must you
Who read this in some history (I hope)
Upon the other side of peace again
Think of me? You will know not who I am.
Will you be able, even, to dare guess
What infamy my silence is against?
They kill black men and women in the street,
And in their churches, and inside their homes.
They cage the orphan and the refugee.
They steal the land and slander those from whom
They stole it. They lock those who only wish
To love as they must love out in the cold.
They visit plagues upon their people's heads.
They slay with club and gas those who cry no.
And all within a year. Nay, half a year.
And any one of these alone deserves
Much more than silence. But what can I do?
We vote. They throw our vote away unread.
We write. They say they share all our concerns
And then continue unconcerned. We speak.
They drown us out and say that we spoke not.
We fight. They call it looting and they call
For more guns, ammunition, poison gas,
And gravely say we brought it on ourselves.
What else is left but silence? At least thus
I stand (I hope) and make eye contact with,
Upon the other side of history and peace
(I hope) you. Reading this. As if to say
We knew. We were as shocked, as scandalized.
We also felt that it could not be real.
We also wished that we could turn the page
And read another era. We could not.
Witness, we beg you, the injustice here
In these our rain-soaked, silent latter days.
Allow no one to edit it away.
After this moment, I will once again
Return to voting, speaking, fighting, and
If necessary, running for my life.
But now there is the rain, and silence too.