I thought that, in light of the events of this past week, it was entirely appropriate to take a fresh look from a different perspective. Poets.org disseminates a poem to an audience estimated at a quarter of a million readers on a weekly basis.
Poets.org has taken the unusual step of inviting venues everywhere to publish the poem for their own audiences. @ the Crossroads - A Sudden American Poem RIP Philando Castile, Alton Sterling, Dallas police officers Lorne Ahrens, Michael Krol, Michael J. Smith, Brent Thompson, and Patrick Zamarripa—and all their families. And to all those injured. Let us celebrate the lives of all As we reflect & pray & meditate on their brutal deaths Let us celebrate those who marched at night who spoke of peace & chanted Black Lives Matter Let us celebrate the officers dressed in Blues ready to protect Let us know the departed as we did not know them before—their faces, Bodies, names—what they loved, their words, the stories they often spoke Before we return to the usual business of our days, let us know their lives intimately Let us take this moment & impossible as this may sound—let us find The beauty in their lives in the midst of their sudden & never imagined vanishing Let us consider the Dallas shooter—what made him what happened in Afghanistan what flames burned inside (Who was that man in Baton Rouge with a red shirt selling CDs in the parking lot Who was that man in Minnesota toppled on the car seat with a perforated arm & a continent-shaped flood of blood on his white T who was That man prone & gone by the night pillar of El Centro College in Dallas ) This could be the first step in the new evaluation of our society This could be the first step of all of our lives - Juan Felipe Herrera, Poet Laureate of the United States, July 8, 2016 Copyright © 2016 by Juan Felipe Herrera. All rights reserved. This poem is being shared by Poem-a-Day, a series from the Academy of American Poets that features new poems by contemporary poets on weekdays and classic poems on weekends. For more please visit www.poets.org or email poem-a-day@poets.org.
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