our liberation is bound up with all others,

let us work together for freedom for all

~

welcome, welcome to the day we celebrate the astonishing light of our being and to day 40 of a season of peace… today is another of my favorite moments in the cycle of life when we rest in the in between times moon, the rainbow moon who sings a song of transformation, of transmuting dark, threatening clouds of pain, into rainbow colored arcs of joy…

i’ve patiently been waiting for 40 days in the desert of the heart to celebrate a queen of liberation… Harriette Tubman and Holy Synchronicity! find that today is the 106th anniversary of  her death…

i shall 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 of liberation…