Honor This Day

Dedicated to the life of Nelson Mandela (1918 – 2013)

~

When I was a child

I once heard a word

I wondered aloud

For it seemed quite weird

~

A news report suggested

A man had been arrested

~

Far too young to know

My life spent running in the fields

Playing baseball, freely walking

Along open avenues

Without fear

A simple reality

That contained

Certain love

Quiet guidance

Granted peace

~

Far away in a distant world

Untouched by my eyes

My age of living souls

Were being gunned down

Randomly with purpose

A driving brutality

Seemed normal …

To live freely

Without bullets or maim

That’s when I read a magazine

~

Newsweek recognizes

Ten years later

The Sharpeville massacre

Later that year Kent State

A couple of years earlier

A dream shatters … MLK Jr

And then the story about

Emmett Till I discovered

The slaughter of a young boy

One brutal moment after another

~

In 1975, I am a teenager

The war is over

We are protesting nukes

Low-impact en masse hostility

Seemed less effective

Than flowers

Hanging from rifle barrels.

I’m a sophomore now

Skipping school

Looking for a cause

~

A world reaching well past me

Existed on a principle of freedom

~

“Free Mandela”

Soweto uprising

End the strong arm

Of Apartheid

~

There it was

In rainbow colors

I could no longer

Simply run through the fields

Without realizing pain

While across the world

The news read gloomily

Of a distant opinion

His protest screamed agony

We must be educated!

~

In memoriam

I am the privileged one

I have lived to watch a man

Know freedom beyond words.