malevolent agents amidst us as summer approaches

A snapshot of early June

we’re within three weeks of the Summer Solstice, 

school is winding down, 90 degree days are reaching toward us,

the early spring garden has done well:

lettuce and peas still bearing,

though the heat is pushing the first plantings to prepare to give up,

the summer garden approaches:

green beans ready soon,

potatoes swelling underground to match the exuberance of their foliage,

tomato flowers set into little green marbles of fruit, 

cucumbers, okra, squash, and pumpkin 

still more of promise than of delivery,

the blueberries are green and full,

and tantalize us with how they’ll be when ripe,

meanwhile, Covid 19 implacably advances on the world,

most of us fine, most of those of us catching the virus, fine,

but, like Russian Roulette, the cartridge was in their firing chamber,

and over 100,000 Americans have died from losing the gamble,

too many of those of color, and of poverty,

those of nursing home, of prisons, of meatpacking plants,

more easily can slip into the disaster that those of us

of means and of social distancing can so far avoid,

the Twin Cities, a place we love,

where our family prospers and where we appreciate

the diversity, the food, the social awareness there,

there, also, in their Eden, is the original sin,

a black man turned into a thing

by a policeman, privileged in his power,

this time, across the country, across the world,

the power of the cell phone and its video,

and the power within our hearts,

erupted into our awareness,

and shocked us into realizing a truth

that our brothers and sisters of color already knew:

to walk out into the world

can allow death to be there to greet you,

we can fear the virus being that malevolent agent,

a malevolent agent too many of our brothers and sisters

have also found in the fear that the privileged can feel

which can sentence them, arbitrarily, to death,

a knee on their throat, on their hopes of being judged 

on the content of their hearts, and on the substance 

they seek to build with their characters.

by Henry H. Walker

June 4, ‘20