Reintroduction:  Three and a Half Years Hence

What if, we wonder, the word were never infused
            With its meaning?
What if, we wonder, the word were never used
            As a weapon or defense
            Of war: for hatred?
What if, we wonder, the word were never whispered
            In classrooms or plantations or factories
            Or offices or streets or around tall oaks
            Or around burning crosses or churches?
What if, we wonder, the word were never thought
            In anger or spite,
            In North and South and West
            Toward strangers whose actions belie it–
            Or even reify it–from afar or near?
What if, we wonder, the word were never bestowed
            Upon a people, pure and whole,
            Stolen from their home
            And cursed for their freedom
            In their new land–new home–
            By blind hypocrites?
 

            As stones and spears:
Because words carry meaning
            Like a burning cauldron:
Because words are imperfect
            And insidious
                        In their imperfections
            But far worse
                        In their calculations.
 
Because, even for those who wish
            It didn’t exist–
                        Disingenuously
            Denying its use–
                        It always lingers.
 
What if, we wonder, the word were never taken
            Seriously or internalized,
            Appropriated and claimed
            And shouted back with
            Disdain, shackle-freed, toward its
            Original owners?
What if, we wonder, the word were never remembered
            Or its injustice in Jim Crow
            Or Separate but Equal
            Or Three-fifthsism
            Or Slavery itself?
What if, we wonder, the word were never coded,
            In arguments for tradition,
            For the false ablutions:  fissures
            In our tender fabric?
What if, we wonder, the word were never shielded
            From the hard-panged realities
            Of systemic inequality?
What if, we wonder, the word were never bestowed
            A place in our lexicon?
What if, we wonder, the word were never uttered?
 
What if:
            Never.

            At the smack end,
Right before the resignation,
            Before the national shame:
Suckling, utterly dependent.
 

Just then came thirty-eight,
            Rebuilding us,
Claiming reconciliation.
            Nursing and still a toddler:
Bright-eyed, boisterously upright.

            Polyestered,
Pleading naïveté, malaise.
            Training-wheeled and water-winged:
Commanding youth-infused mettle.

            Contagiously
Optimistic: unabated
            Words and dreams and pride and words:
Growing strong in adolescence.
 

Forty-one: points from light,
            Warring, winning
Against cold, victory in right.
            Ideals: justice in action:
Making heroes, making meaning.

            Navigating
Nuance, irony: “is” isn’t,
            Staging bully charisma:
Building metaphors from biceps.

Stubbornly forty-three,
            To adulthood,
Behind the veneers of success,
            No longer just my:  our best:
Breaking rules and hearts, party lines.
 

And here I am:
Thirty-nine at forty-four,
Steeped in hope and caution,
            Watching the world spin
            Around me–us–
            Catching my breath,
            Holding fast,
Counting back and ahead,
Wondering when comes
            Convergence:
            Forties–forty-five, perhaps–
                        Fifties?  Likely not.
            Or if all the chances here have past:
 

            Toward our rebirth
Or is it fancy renaissance,
            Or a different beginning?
Or are such histories the only
 
            Future there is left?
            At this precipice–
                        At thirty-nine:
                        Now, still, again.