amidst the worst i have seen the best

amidst the worst i have seen the best
a man one cold night who breaks a lock

a prairie pond in a fenced-in block

a heart-shaped hole in a hornet's nest
a single star in a sky of black
a council under the red line track
a page filled up with a soul expressed
a single tooth pull corn off the cob
a last mile driver who quits the job
a teacher sleep when she needed rest
a child so bored that she builds a clock
a crowd of stray dogs that form a pack
a tiktok trend that ignites a mob
a swarm of pigeons ascend in flock
a people taking their whole world back
to share the bounty the bankers rob
and at long last make the least the blessed

This is the Year (2022/5783)

 This is the Year
after Martín Espada, and all prophets

This is in fact the year that squatters evict landlords,
meeting like city planners in the open of the parking lot
or sipping coffee with a blessing
for watching morning rain through the window;
this is the year
that brown-skinned refugees
ship governors to islands
who stare at their feet on the plane anticipating
the hospitality they are due;
this is the year that police glocks,
scalding-hot, burn the hands
that grab them,
and tasers backfire
on their wielders;
this is the year
that Indigenous children
buried under boarding schools
return to play on swing sets
and ask the teachers
difficult questions.

This is the year that those
who cross deserts with their children
and lay hushed in the backs of trucks
are greeted with trombones and choirs
at the first town boundary
on the other side;
this is the year that the hands
drilling fence post holes into concrete
unearth stones carved with the original names
of the land beneath the concrete,
the hands operating circular saws
are cast in silver and mounted over the doors
of the giant glass towers they build;
this is the year that the eyes
stinging from contaminants in water
used to wash dishes
awaken at last to the sight
of sunflowers and grasshoppers,
pilgrimage of refugee roots;
this is the year that rats
grow fat in petting zoos, that no mother
wakes to the sound of rodents
chewing through her tent;
this is the year that billionaires
apply for Unemployment Assistance
and no tax dollars are given for bulldozers
to demolish Palestinian families' homes
in Eretz Yisrael.

If the abolition of slave auction blocks
began as a vision of humans unshackled,
then this is the year;
if the shutdown of witch trials
began as imagination of humans
unafraid of burning stakes, drowning stones, or the gallows,
then this is the year;
if every revolution begins with the idea
that arrogant barons in fine clothes
are not divinely anointed lords, that they too drown
if swallowed by the sea,
then this is the year.

So may every plundered body,
veins like desecrated rivers,
rise with the Waters of Life.