Thursday, October 2, 2025

Wild Woman, Tapping the Keys

 


Wild Woman keeps tapping the keys.
The words come from who knows where?

The white bird asks: is this the best
humanity is capable of? She flicks her tail
in annoyance. Do better, she says,
and flies slip-sliding away.

Wild Woman has such a weary heart
from struggling - forever, it seems -
in hopes of a more just world.
Her worst nightmare has arrived,
something she never thought to see
in North America, which has fought
so long and so hard a fight
for justice.

She is so tired of marching, 
fighting the same old fights
over and over again,
every few decades.

If Wild Woman keeps tapping these keys,
might a miracle occur?
Might the transformation
of consciousness she has waited
a lifetime for
finally occur
?

The arc of justice is long.
Maybe not in Wild Woman's time,
but, she hopes, in her grandchildren's time,
the white bird of peace will smile again.
Maybe the song of humanity -
of equality and freedom of choice and of voice -
will ring again in this land, that has fought and bled
 for hundreds of years to quell the racism,
the hatred, the othering, 
at its core,
and will reclaim the hard-won
rights to that underlying dream
that has always been
the land of the free
and the home of the brave.

Wild Woman is in mourning. But she hears
the white bird's call. The hope of that small bird
keeps her tapping on the keys,
seeing what messages come,
keeps her believing that our better angels
will one day vanquish, once and for all,
those who want a world
all painted white.


I tapped the keys. This is what came. I can't believe we are having this same fight again for social (or any other kind of) justice. More scarily now than I ever expected.

1 comment:

  1. Even in past centuries, when this was the land of opportunity it was also a land of oppression. It took tremendous effort to shrug off divisions that were meant to stay, but progress was being made. When I see the public support for one who so egregiously -- nay, blatantly -- abuses his power to wipe out those advances, I fear it will take generations (and a world of angels) to reverse the damage.

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