Field Notes #8: Writers Resisting

You are reading the weekly poetry newsletter, "Entangled Worlds: A Field Guide to Hope in a World Unraveling." Read more about it here.

Dearest waylarks, gather close. I fear I have no words, no words for such times. Only weeping. The cold is bone deep. The foxes and feral cats prowl and snap. The setting sun is like a low candle, burning itself out. The horrors inflicted on our neighbors, our friends, ourselves - they defy words. It seems like all song grows quiet amid such cruelty.

And yet…

My friends finds solace in cozy stories of found family. Queerness becomes a superpower in a scifi television show. Community organizers turn poems into songs of love across difference, and countless readers see the world they want to make in fiction. These readers see themselves for maybe the first time and pray that it’s not the last.

What is a novel but a resistance? Resistance against a system that says stories are but mere entertainment when stories are actually the lifeblood at beating at the heart of change, keeping justice alive. Stories are a bright star singing to us on the coldest nights, telling us there is more - more than this veil of cruelty, more that this ceaseless noise of violence, more beyond the banal abyss of a rich white man’s imagination. More. More! MORE!

Community organizers, protestors, and activists are gasping great lungfuls of aliveness. Bright futures blow to us on the tailwinds, and it is stories, STORIES that fuel this great crackling and pregnant possibility.

So find your words for these times. Write, doodle, sculpt, sing, dance, and resist any system that says our stories are a luxury. They are our survival.

No Words

There are no words for these times
but the sweet sun like dew
and the red buds of maple
waiting
waiting.

A wise person once told me that
we see the prison bars ahead
but forget the open door behind
and when I watch the vultures
swirl and soar
I think they must be right
for spring always comes
and ice
always
melts
and I can feed on death while I follow
the strengthening sun
home.

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