with an excerpt from “Lift Every Voice and Sing by James Weldon Johnson”
“we have come”
a great distance from where we started
years and generations have passed since
this date made what was then known as
freedom concrete. we go
“over a way that with tears
have been watered”
tear stained faces had looked to the heavens
for help and peace and love and freedom
as they bore us
as they pushed us forward
as they died for us
“we have come”
not as far as we hoped we would
we still face the scourge of what they were afraid of
of what they never wanted us to see
of what they hoped our future wouldn’t be like
freedom isn’t now
freedom has never been for us
i fear that freedom will never be for us
at least for another hundred years
at most for another four hundred
we never left the darkness they bore us to escape
but we never left the path they forged for us
that they laid the groundwork for us
and as we struggle to get by
so here we are,
in the present,
doing the best we can as we’re
“treading our path
through the blood of the slaughtered”
valentine 