Rally
I’m going to stand up here and read this damn poem
even though it’s hard. I have to hide all the things
I want to say behind this clever cloud of words.
Listen. I want to leap from the stage, run into the street
like that guy at the end of Invasion of the Body Snatchers,
stop all the traffic and shout “Don’t you understand? It’s love!”
Sure, the cops would eventually come, but I’ve always been
pretty skilled at evading the cops. Like that one time in Rochester
when my name was echoing off the buildings from the ends
of police bullhorns and the crowd formed around me and pushed
me through like a baby in the birth canal until I came out the other
side and ducked into an alley like a spy in a Cold War movie.
Of course love isn’t like running an illegal protest, at least not all the time.
But anymore I’m learning it can take all the same skills, the same
willingness to court damage to the spirit, if not physical danger.
So why do it? Because sometimes all the little moments align.
Your fates march together. You press forward, hands linked,
fists raised, faces upturned toward a bright, uncertain future.
/ / /
5 March 2014
State College
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