Dancing in the Fields

Illiteracy is rampant,
and people have begun
to mistake noise
for communication.

We stand modern enough
to afford the luxury of aloofness,
Yet ancient despair
still gathers at the mouth
like a truth
We are too polished to say.

Somewhere, strange fruit
is left to decay
in the wallows of life,
And we call it a truce
because naming the wound
would require us
to become responsible.

There was once
a nightingale of hope
moving through the leaves,
a tender sound
before it scattered
into thin air.

Even the peach tree
knows what it means
to search for shade
and love
in the in-between hour
of summer bliss.

When things fall apart,
Time does not always punish us.
Sometimes it asks us
to remediate,
to examine the inner body
of a life,
a people,
a nation,
like an annual checkup
We kept postponing.

Have we surrendered
to the ease
of instant gratification?

Have we traded direction
for convenience,
Reflection for response,
thought for performance,
and delayed satisfaction
for the cheap applause
of the moment?

I wonder
what Emerson would say.
What Baldwin would write.
What Langston would sing
beneath his breath.
What Churchill, yes, Churchill,
would make of a society
so distracted
It cannot hear itself thinking.

Without tradition,
art wanders without a shepherd.
Without innovation,
It becomes a beautiful corpse.

And what is leadership
If not, the sanctity
of impulse made noble
By responsibility?

What is courage
If not, the refusal
to appease the crocodile
and pray
It eats us last?

We have soothed
too much mediocrity.
We have bowed
too long
before belligerence
and called it peace.

Let this be a warning.

If mediocrity becomes
the language of a people,
What will the generations inherit?

Will they know
the difference
between intelligence
and imitation?

Between debate
and destruction?

Between freedom
and the careless spilling
of one’s spirit
with a gun pointed
at the throat
of an opinion?

May the flood come clean.

May all false brilliance
lie down.

May we return
to civil conversation,
to stimulating debate,
to the sacred discipline
of listening
without losing ourselves.

For brilliance
is sharpened
by challenge.

The mind brightens
when it is questioned.

And there is still beauty,
still grace,
still a field worth dancing in,
when we remember
that difference
does not have to become war.

Let this moment. It will
be a testament of time.

Let us be remembered
not for how loudly
We performed certainty,
But for how bravely
we returned
to thought—

—Delia

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