This year, I wrote a different kind of Advent poem. I had all sorts of imagery in my head: thoughts of the recent election, refugees fleeing all sorts of horror, news of wildfires in the mountains of the U.S. south, this Adrienne Rich poem, and a variety of poems posted in mid-November on the Via Negativa site.
I wrestled with the title, as I often do. Part of my problem is that I couldn't decide if I thought the poem was hopeful or not--it's both hopeful and doomed, and I like the fact that it can occupy both spaces at once--as is so often the case with so many of us and so many events.
This week, as I've been reading Isaiah along with other Advent texts, I've thought about this poem, which I actually wrote the week before Thanksgiving, although Advent was already on my brain. Are the voices of the ancestors these ancient prophets? Perhaps. Or maybe they are the apocalyptic novelists I've always loved. Or maybe they are the social activists who have always inspired me.
Or maybe all of it.
So, a poem to enjoy on your first Saturday of Advent!
Exercising Freedom
Once again, you find yourself
on the old revolutionary road
with the houses that once hid
the asylum seekers.
The long road stretches
before you, overgrown
with brambles and struggling seedlings.
You see the fires
ahead, burning cities
or perhaps the lights
of fellow travelers.
Smoke hides the mountains.
The road is lined
with the suitcases of immigrants
who abandoned all the essentials
they once lugged to a new country.
You have kept your treasures
sewn into your hemlines, heirloom
seeds and the small computer chip
that holds your freedom papers.
Your grandmother’s gold hoops dance
in your earlobes and twinkle
around your fingers.
You hear the voices of the ancestors,
colored with both reason and panic.
Go faster, they urge.
You are needed up ahead.
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