Hour 2: “Promises to Keep”

 “Supreme Court Invalidates Key Part of Voting Rights Act”

 

My peers, savoring fresh air, are buying campers

And basking in wonders of waterfalls

And sunsets and snowy woods and meandering

Rivers and breathless vistas atop

breezy mountains aiming for paradise

 

My retired friends vacation in Hawaii

Tour Europe and cruise the Mediterranean —

where the seas are smooth and calm —

They relish Alaska’s northern shore –

where they watch dawn’s borealis shimmer like a dream

of angel’s wings, brushing the sky in rainbows

without the inconvenience of rain

 

“But I have promises to keep”

Promises made to the ancestors

Who brought me through

And made this way

out for me

when there was no way

 

I have honor to keep

To carry the dream for

Progeny because

The battle was won for me, for them

Yet the war rages on

 

I have war songs to sing

Set to the cadence of higher ground,

Marching to Sweet Honey’s pure sound

And Ella’s prophetic voice:

“We who believe in freedom cannot rest”

 

Slipping up mountains coated with life’s blood

Carrying the burdens of this history

“Lifting as we climb”

Letting the future know

They won’t be able to retire

from this battlefield

For we have “miles to go”

And “promises to keep”

 

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