The world is not a per­fect place.
There is injus­tice here, unfairness,
dis­missal of what’s best and true,
in us, in others.
But you can­not keep love in check forever.
You can­not keep what’s right in lim­bo for too long.
You can­not keep trust in soli­tary, con­fined to darkness.
You can­not keep the strength of your rebel­lious soul
in a prison box of belief or the attacks of pop­u­lar opinion.
You. You will leak out into the world
with­out any­body’s required pass­port or stamped, indif­fer­ent permission.
With­out know­ing, with­out trying,
your dig­ni­ty will be known for exact­ly what it is.
No mat­ter how you try to hide,
the self can be bricked up and hid­den only for a short while.
You know that and you know
it can­not last.
All walls
are meant to be broken,
all chains
are meant to be severed.
Joy is meant to pierce even the jailor’s dis­tort­ed heart
and chil­dren are meant to skip true
to the music of a gra­cious, orig­i­nal sun.

The world is not a per­fect place.
Some kill, and not just the body,
for the thrill and plea­sure of the power
to fill a hole and find again their own elu­sive center.
But you. You! You don’t give that kind of life away.
You find the sanc­tu­ary, the secret,
and you call, even if mis­un­der­stood for a life­time, to those around you.
You find the mys­tery and sing it out as a home for all.
You stop giv­ing in to depres­sion, anger, fear and the com­mon self-destruction.
You remem­ber — for all — the heart’s fer­vent song
of wel­comed peace, of what is right
of what bonds us and what is our love,
of what calls us for­ward to possibilities
we can­not pos­si­bly ful­ly know, but trust,
lov­ing the unknown irony of our col­lec­tive soli­tude in space
and our some­times awk­ward work together,
self-deceived as it might be.
You, after the pain, still give
to the mead­ows and mountains
and the big seas our com­mon hope
to make this our bet­ter place
to make us a bet­ter people,
to remind us of our dreams and our hum­ble rights,
the ones we have lost all too often
to the raw, wound­ing, unfor­get­table wars
of col­or, gen­der, nation, iden­ti­ty and spirit;
to remind us of our hum­ble rights
to care for those we care for,
to love who we will love;
to be togeth­er — or to be alone for a lifetime –
to be exact­ly who we are, and in our way always
to cel­e­brate the sweet, transient,
unfath­omable, incredible
peo­ple we
are meant to be.

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