The passage was dark and damp
over a month locked inside a cell under the sea somewhere
but when Father Jones planted his feet back on solid ground
and saw the Statue of Liberty rising like a green mountain into the gray sky
he knew he had found his country. The free life was not always so easy,
and he had to work for his milk & honey. After he took
a bayonet through the lung in Germany, he settled down to turn cogs
in a Pittsburg factory, but knew it was all worth it when he laid eyes on
Mother Jones. Their sons became salesmen, and the youngest
married a Dutch girl, who adopted my father, who met my mother
studying at Vanderbilt, the Harvard of the south.
Noonday Sun
Suffering, so much suffering astounds,
Suffering brings us to our very knees,
And cries out to us in sleepless nights,
In the morning, fatigued and wrenched,
Begging for a reprieve from the day,
The sun is blocked by the sound of our own doubt,
“Where is the end of all this?”
“To what end is this, Lord Buddha?”
And he points to the clouds,
And says, “Wait”
And in that moments waiting,
We think to our children,
And we look to their faces, smiling faces though still starving in tattered rags,
And we understand, that there is a brighter day for them,
For someone made the Sun I tell you,
For someone made the Sun,
And as the Son heats the clouds,
We feel the wind on our heat scorched faces,
And we say, “Allah, what is the meaning of this?”
And she says, “Wait!”
And in that moments waiting,
We think of Mother Jones pleading for her people as she speaks truth to power.
And as droplets of rain begin to fall into our sordid subconscious,
We begin to grasp the nature of a Grace that suffers with us,
And as droplets of rain begin to fall into our sordid subconscious,
We look to each other,
And feel the warmth of a Noonday sun.