Between then and tomorrow

(c) Amy Marchand Collins, June 2020

 

Liminality

Rhymes with criminality

An assumption laid on some folks

Due to the color of their skin.

So much we take for granted

So many places where

My white skin and privilege gets me in

It means I’m grateful when police arrive should my car break down

I trust they’re here to help me

But I also know—though we may live in the same town—

my Black neighbors experience

a vastly different reality

One that far too often ends in police brutality

It’s way past time we end that duality

The waiting place in Dr. Seuss

Captures the feeling of living

When all the ends are loose

Covid-19 quarantine

Scrub each surface til it’s clean

Distance Learning, OMG

For my son to partake requires me—

My full attention, all my focus

just to keep him in his chair

Or “Five Little Monkeys” soon

will fill the air

Maybe it’s because I’m older

(Or perhaps grief has made me lazy?)

But I am choosing grace for me

Rather than make myself crazy

Which means most days lately

I just let him be.

He’s here and he is happy

That’s what’s most important now

When these teens of mine

were in the NICU,

I made myself a sacred vow

To bring them home & keep them safe,

and make good come

for more than just for me

While this pandemic rages on

I’ll keep my family home with me.

And so I sit and knit and watch in horror

As events unfold on my TV

Protests in all fifty states, in cities that I know and love—Boston, London, Kansas City, Washington, DC—

Oh what happened there in Lafayette Square!

It makes my blood boil still –

Protesters peacefully making their voices heard

Marching in the waning sun

Families some with children among them—

people together having fun

When without warning—

BANG!

flash bangs and tear gas canisters pop

sudden violence drives the people streaming from the park

To what end?

An upside-down Bible in

An UN-presidential photo op

You wonder why folks are angry?

Or why they’d risk COVID to march?

400 years of suffering

Are coming up at last

Pain demanding to be seen

and heard and witnessed

In order to be grieved.

Perhaps the place for us to start

Is for us finally to believe

Those who share with us their lived experiences

Even if they differ from our own

And to act

On the values we were taught were shared—

To expand those benefits and blessings to all.

And before you say “it wasn’t me who committed all those crimes

“Besides, that happened far away, in practically ancient times. “

Consider

If those errors really were behind us

If we truly valued every life

Then Derek Chauvin would not have been so nonchalant

As his knee choked out George Floyd’s life.

The police knee upon Floyd’s throat that brought his untimely end

Revealed in vivid video that cannot be denied,

truths that all our Black friends have lived with all their lives.

The protests are about George Floyd, yes,

but also so much more—

His name is but the latest in a wound that goes to our nation’s very core

This injustice then is nothing new,

It springs from the Original Lie

at the heart of our nation’s founding:

If “All Men Are Created Equal” why

did so many of those

who inked their names

on those documents so lofty

count human beings—

chattel slaves—

on their balance sheets as property?

And why today so many years since slavery’s abolition, do we STILL treat people as less than

due to the pigment of their skin?

Young folk today, they get it,

to them it just makes sense

“equal protection under the laws” sounds pretty common sense.

It should apply the same to everyone.

For the fact that it doesn’t yet, there is no defense.

So they march through the streets in cities across the land and chant Black Lives Matter hoping soon they’ll be treated as if they do.

Risking COVID? yes they are,

but the risk just proves again how deeply deeply vital

these issues truly are.

Four years ago now I wrote of the sunset-colored hats I knit

And my fervent wish we could

Avoid the darkness

into which we’d then just

begun to slip

But that’s not how life works, is it, friends?

To bring about the day we long for

We must first survive this night.

Again it seems we must relearn

the truth that

might does not make right.

We must become willing to acknowledge harms

that continue to this day

Though the cause be rooted in distant past

The pain is felt today.

For us who still may find this shocking, our task is simple

Yet hard to do

We must look squarely into the dark and understand the harm our privilege cost

We don’t get to coddle or appease our fragile white sensibilities

When our neighbors are literally dying

to be seen

And treated as human beings.

Do I now detect a pinkish

gleam brightening the eastern sky?

Dare we hope yet for the dawn?

Or is this glow from fires set to burn to ash those centuries of harm?

Even after this dark storm of hatred’s passed

We all must continue to do our part

We each must do more

than just not hate.

We must actively work to dismantle

The lies that we were taught

To counter this insidious evil

through all its tricky wiles,

Face it, focus on it clearly

Do not turn aside.

Shine the light of truth upon it

Let a new awareness rise

Pull back the curtains that have hid

the shames of generations past

Allow the cleansing sunlight in

See with newly humble eyes

And let the dissonance we now can feel between who we thought we were and who we actually are

Grow within us

adding fuel to our resolve to do what’s right

A more perfect union is within our reach when our actions align to match our speech

To flatten this most vital of curves,

Reach up and grasp history’s moral arc

And bend it to Justice’s waiting arms

While praying and working toward the day

We may see the Baptist preacher’s dream fulfilled—

When the home of the brave and the land of the free finally

becomes

what we’ve claimed it to be.

By doing the work that will set us all free

May we bring to fruition the Beloved Community.