I.
Fear wanted my name sealed within
A question not even my bluest instinctCould unfold. But then the wind began to flutter
The first bright image I heard make the darkness sing.
To think, before this, I felt ready to lose the miracleOf adding a few quiet feathers to the heart.
To think: I trusted that silence was my destiny.
***
You’ve believed before that your destiny was with silence.
Then a wanting suddenly feathered this bright instinctAlready added to your name, a windy heart
No question will seal or quiet, the bluest flutter.
Nothing can undo the miracle of hearingWhat has yet to unfold. Trust what you began:
Between the reemergence of right-wing red-baiting and Donald Trump’s use of the chilling National Security Presidential Memorandum–7 to criminalize left political organizing, we’re seeing McCarthyism reborn before our eyes.
This assault on democracy cannot be ignored or wished away. Resisting it requires bravery in the face of threats and repression, a steadfast commitment to the truth, and the unwavering belief that we can—and will—overcome this darkness.
We must have an independent media that sets the record straight, unearths corruption and abuses of power, and advances a politics of justice and dignity for all if we’re to win this fight.
That’s why I’m writing to you today. This September, The Nation needs to add 100 monthly donors to sustain our progressive journalism. Your contribution makes the next investigative report, the next truth-speaking column, and the next pathbreaking essay all possible.
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Onward,
Katrina vanden Heuvel
Editor and Publisher, The Nation
Only you can make your darkness sing.
II.
To banish that empty kind of praying, I try
Tilting this pain-invented loudness from my breath.I swear a new season lives there. I hear it humming
With every reason to make the rain into an answer.
Whether I speak or stay silent, I desireThe good promise in each body to continue.
The sky is where I choose to look now.
***
Don’t forget the sky’s answer inside you,
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Each rain-cloud kind of hummingWith breath. Whether tried or tilted,
The right prayer will invent a new reason
Not to banish the good body still living there.You can choose to hear it now, every season,
This emptying of any knowing that promises pain.
III.
I only mention more birds for the music
To soften the hurt of all connection. But shame wouldAim the infinity of my mind at another dead return
Failed by light. Sometimes, too many stilled wings
Rhyme with “never”—my limbs going so numbRemembering what the hunch in my back couldn’t make
Stony or clear. I’m waiting for this to sound like safety…
***
To be clear and unmoved: your own listening is becoming a softness…
Even when reviving a dead hunch still drowning in blame,You’ve never been known to mention a failure that couldn’t hold
The music of safety. If aimed at infinity, your mind remembers
Some numbed desires will rhyme with a hurt bird’s return—But only to find the hymn for calling back more
Of the banished light. It sounds like many, many wings.
Geffrey DavisGeffrey Davis is the author of One Wild Word Away and Night Angler, winner of Academy of American Poets’ James Laughlin Award. Davis teaches at University of Arkansas and The Rainier Writing Workshop.