It Is in Your Spirit, or It Is Nowhere
You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution.
It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.
—Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia
You see gray ghosts lost in the dust,
unseen by most who pass.
Activist for the dispossessed,
wielding a pen instead of fists.
For the indigenous, fettered to reservation.
Treaties cracked like cast bronze bells,
their substance alloyed with too much tin.
For the forests consumed,
board by board, plank by plank
where trees once exhaled.
While pockets of the greedy burgeon,
an empty chrysalis falls tattered into the wind.
Your words, a plea for the dignity
of men and women in tents,
scattered in parks and alleyways;
crumpled litter blowing in the wind,
unseen by most who pass.
You lift a voice against the truncheon swung
to flatten the tough, indigestible meat
of truth, those betrayed by the thin blue line.
Words alone cannot classify you.
You, ardent one,
sifting and screening stone from soil.
You, collector of small pieces
left lying on the ground.