our liberation is bound up with all others,
let us work together for freedom for all
~
welcome, well come to day 40 of a season of peace where i’ve been sauntering these 40 days in the desert of the heart patiently waiting to celebrate a supreme shero and queen of liberation – Harriette Tubman – and Holy Synchronicity! find that today is the 108th anniversary of her death…
i shall now turn this platform over to the poem of Sonia Sanchez to bring light to the life of this extraordinary being…
1
Picture a woman riding thunder on the legs of slavery …
2
Picture her kissing our spines saying no to the eyes of slavery …
3
Picture her rotating the earth into a shape of lives becoming …
4
Picture her leaning into the eyes of our birth clouds …
5
Picture this woman saying no to the constant yes of slavery …
6
Picture a woman jumping rivers her legs inhaling moons …
7
Picture her ripe with seasons of legs … running …
8
Picture her tasting the secret corners of woods …
9
Picture her saying: You have within you the strength,
the patience, and the passion
to reach for the stars,
to change the world …
10
Imagine her words: Every great dream begins
with a dreamer …
11
Imagine her saying: I freed a thousand slaves,
could have freed
a thousand more if they
only knew they were slaves …
12
Imagine her humming: How many days we got
fore we taste freedom …
13
Imagine a woman asking: How many workers
for this freedom quilt …
14
Picture her saying: A live runaway could do
great harm by going back
but a dead runaway
could tell no secrets …
15
Picture the daylight bringing her to woods full of birth moons …
16
Picture John Brown shaking her hands three times saying: General Tubman. General Tubman. General Tubman.
17
Picture her words: There’s two things I got a
right to: death or liberty …
18
Picture her saying no to a play called Uncle Tom’s Cabin: I am the real thing …
19
Picture a Black woman: could not read or write trailing freedom refrains …
20
Picture her face turning southward walking down a Southern road …
21
Picture this woman freedom bound … tasting a people’s preserved breath…
22
Picture this woman of royalty … wearing a crown of morning air …
23
Picture her walking, running, reviving a country’s breath …
24
Picture black voices leaving behind lost tongues …
~
may we continue her underground railroad mission as an aboveground movement of liberation from the inside out…