Poetry Year August 20 The Option of the Public

"The Option of the Public"

The humid haze that is the due of August days,

the love coming from other sun's skies,

take me to river,

drop me in the water.

On a summer hill they fought over words,

riven between the love of all madness,

and the madness that is love for all.

take me to the river,

drop me in the water.

How many candles for the lost we lit,

from the sickness overcome.

Death by poverty,

the sentence for that common crime.

So many on death row,

in every county, state, and town.

Drenched by death and illness,

in debt they cry and drown.

Take me to the river,

Drop me in the water.

He had a dream.

That all God's children,

Would get to that mountain,

that mountain we peer to

still on far horizon.

Is he atop it looking on,

beckoning to follow,

and reflected in that every turning pool,

that is the mirror of a body politic.

Take to me to the river,

drop me in the water,

and baptize me a new,

with a new birth of freedom.

We cannot hallow, we cannot consecrate this ground,

the legions of the lost to sickness,

have hallowed it,

and their blood is a wide deep river.

Take me to the river,

Drop me in the water.

From that river let us come to the air,

for that is what the air is for,

and pledge ourselves a new day,

where upon our own,

we war no more.

Between our desert of decision,

and our shining promised city,

is this wasteland we have wandered

for forty days, and forty days, and forty more.

For forty years I'm told,

and before that some forty more.

He went out into the wasteland

and asked for blessing.

Take me to the river.

Drop me in the water.

And if we fail on this day

to do our daily bread,

let me not come up for breath again.