Fire and Song

Words: Rachel Manly

Images: Mark Duerr and Lynn Duerr

 I’ve seen beauty unparalleled and creation

and delight that’s wildly alive, I’ve seen

humanity. I’ve heard oceans in chaos with children

and gunshots and desolation unmatched on dark

wilderness seas. I’ve seen hope, and it trembles

over the water, a far-off beacon, and rage

like a curling wave pants after it without slowing,

and we rise again and again with a roar and a shadow

of our own. Can you hear one voice? Or is it already

divided? Can you taste one victory, or has it fallen

through the fingers of the ones who might have held

it high for even the loneliest child?  Maybe

once I held your hand in your tattered coat

and trekked on at your side in shoes without

soles, laughing, mocking the future and forgetting

the past. And now, what is between us, a bulwark

around a city gate that protects me and leaves you

out in the cold? Where is the light, and where

is the heart, when our hands mixed broken

colors and raised up murals from the dust? We

leaned on each other and shot war cries like daggers

as white petals spilled heavy from our lips.  And hope

rolled above our heads like the heartbeat of a drum

and did not tremble. But time’s crushing feet dim

the color, weaken the fury, and we lose the passion

that makes us human, and we walk like specters

through each other, empty. Friend, stranger,

kindred soul, I’ll carry that beacon on my shoulders

but not alone; carry it with me, sing with me, grieve

with me, lose with me, love with me, through the weakened

night and the tangled smoke. After all, when the rains

clear and the fog lifts, all we are is fire and song.