@ the Crossroads - Juan Felipe Herrera

[Larry Robinson]

Thanks, Larry; good to see you yesterday.


“Be joyful though you have considered all the facts.”
	- Wendell Berry



> On Jul 11, 2016, at 8:11 AM, Larry Robinson <Lrobpoet at sonic.net> wrote:
> 
> @ the Crossroads—A Sudden American Poem
>  
> 
>        RIP Philando Castile, Alton Sterling, Dallas police
>        officers Lorne Ahrens, Michael Krol, Michael J. Smith,
>        Brent Thompson, and Patrick Zamarripa—and all
>        their families. And to all those injured.
>  
>  
>                                                 Let us celebrate the lives of all
> As we reflect & pray & meditate on their brutal deaths
> Let us celebrate those who marched at night who spoke of peace
> & chanted Black Lives Matter
> Let us celebrate the officers dressed in Blues ready to protect 
> Let us know the departed as we did not know them before—their faces,
> Bodies, names—what they loved, their words, the stories they often spoke
> Before we return to the usual business of our days, let us know their lives intimately
> Let us take this moment & impossible as this may sound—let us find 
> The beauty in their lives in the midst of their sudden & never imagined vanishing
> 
> Let us consider the Dallas shooter—what made him
>                                                            what happened in Afghanistan
>                                            what
>             flames burned inside
> 
> (Who was that man in Baton Rouge with a red shirt selling CDs in the parking lot
> Who was that man in Minnesota toppled on the car seat with a perforated arm 
> & a continent-shaped flood of blood on his white T who was
> That man prone & gone by the night pillar of El Centro College in Dallas)
> 
> This could be the first step 
>             in the new evaluation of our society    This could be
>                 the first step of all of our lives
>  
> 
> 	- Juan Felipe Herrera
> 		(Juan Felipe Herrera is America’s Poet Laureate)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> “Be joyful though you have considered all the facts.”
> 	- Wendell Berry
> 
> 
> 
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