I don't (want to ) care!

I don’t (want to ) care!

6/01/2020

 

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there are times I want to say I don’t care

as I watch the overt racism play out on the streets of my country

as I watch the subtle racism play out in our courts

as I am confronted with the systematic racism we pretended was gone

 

I want to turn my back

and ignore the fires of cities burning

the attacks on the press by a militant police

the blithering ineptitude of a leader

who cannot calm and unite, because his only tools are chaos and division

 

I want it to end

this nightmare of Covid-19

right wing terrorism

left wing arrogant perfectionism

 

I want to go back to the America that never really was

but which we pretended existed

where all people are created equal

and all have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness

 

but I can’t go back to what never was

for there a black man lying on the street, dead

there are the brown children, in cages

there is the economic system that crushes the poor,

and makes it impossible for them to rise.

 

I can’t fix it

I can’t escape it

I want it to end

and so, desperately I want to stop caring

 

but I care so much

I feel I will bleed to death with the pain of it

 

and so I look

as the country burns

and the virus spreads

 

I look at the eyes of the protestors, and see pain piled on pain

and at the eyes of the instigators, nurturing violence, and see cold calculation

and into the eyes of the law, and see everything, from hate, to love, to pain

and into the eyes of our ‘leader’ and see nothing

 

but looking I also see

those moments when compassion breaks through

I see police kneeling, side by side with the protestors

I see people voluntarily cleaning up the streets of their cities

I see people working to stop the violence

 

and though as Longfellow noted, in the dark hours of the civil war

“hate is strong” and stills the song of love

 

love breaks through

and in those acts of kindness, and reconciliation

I am reminded that God is Love

and that Love dwells within me, an you

and that Love shall win

 

“The Wrong shall fail, The Right prevail,”

 

because the Love that dwells within us

is stronger than the pain in front of us