I’ve eyed the inland surge of a heavy surf,
and shuddered at the thought of its undertow.
I’ve shivered in a late-summer prairie scene:
bronze waves of wheatgrass,
suddenly chromed by a charge of lightning.
But today I hear the thunder of edict and order,
the chilling spray of manifesto, as from a winter ocean;
and I’m driven to consider the particular valour
of .33 percent of our population—
the everyday resolve of people who’ve glimpsed
their freedom, felt a germinating joy,
in moving beyond the binary map—
not without turmoil, not without
a complexity of sorrows, most know little about:
and not without stepping into a firing-line of deadly phobias—
the Baptist preacher who wishes them “shot in the back,”
the Christian congressman crying, “demons,” “mutants,”
and the calmer, more efficient legislators,
who “only know of two genders.” All useful ammo
for a barrage of policies aiming to eliminate trans folk.
I claim to follow the light of the world,
but today I feel some excrescence in me
advancing to match the hate I see.
And when I say, “I follow the way of a shepherd,”
I find within, a brewing animosity to Christianity,
its use now, as an exclusionary force.
I read, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst
after righteousness,” and I’m filled with indignation
at a so-called “…nation under God.”
I contemplate salt and light, a lamp on a hill,
…and then recall sitting in a coffee shop,
while at a table across the isle, whole communities
of the human family were whittled away
under the razor chatter of the willfully ignorant, and I,
throwing my stones of silence, became a lie.
All this talk and intention, and in moment,
I’m just a twin, hating, yet furtively wearing
the coordinate clothes of empire.
Shall I strike my own cheek? turn the other,
expose the slack mouth of my complicity?
How will I learn to lock arms with those who refuse to bow,
who stand in the light of their own right to be?
Will I wait until they come for me?
I know every brewing storm carries the seed of its own demise,
but what does one do in a series of storms?
I know, “Blessed are the pure in heart,” is not
for the faint of heart, “for they will see God,” not in
some future rapture, but in the here-now faces of the erased,
the locked-out, the deported.
I know every act of resistance carries no guarantee
other than the pain it invites. No guarantee,
other than the soul it ignites. No guarantee,
other than retaining our humanity.