I heard the sneers of discrimination at my schools before I heard the sonnets of poetry through their halls.
But the first time I faced discrimination based on the color of my skin, the language I spoke at home, or some other characterization of me, I didn’t quite know the definition of the word: discrimination.
Similarly, the first time I heard my first poem, I didn’t quite know that it was poetry, either. But in each case my feelings told me what these things were. Today, they still do.
Now, I deploy words to work for me as I’ve worked for them over the course of a lifetime in education, in the same way my mother has worn every bone in her body to work shifts her whole life: to survive any rancorous winds which would seek to tame us.
My mother’s feet are waning into the ages now, yet with each new day she makes one thing clear:
We will not go gently into the night. Every moment we get, is another moment to rise.
J.T.
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