My challenge: to not be polarized,
my challenge – to not be right.
However easy it may seem,
how smooth the path along that route,
it never has delivered me
to the new place, the place
I long to go

My challenge: not to polarize.
So vastly better to be silent
than speak the worn out words
defining tribe

Mine is not a happy tribe to have come from –
the tribe of right (more oily and insidious
than the tribe of white,
which I may righteously deplore)

My task – dip seven times in Jordan,
learn the river’s lessons,
come out clean.

©Wendy Mulhern
June 2, 2020