My Mom and Richard III Might Have Been Onto Something

Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer by this sun of York

Words that play

On the cassette player of my childhood memories. Chilly

Autumn evenings waiting

In the mini-van

For my dad to pick up the pizza. Me, my brother,

And my mom, before cell phones detached us all from each other

And we wanted a way to pass the time by flying

Back to England in our minds

Through my mother’s lips

A soliloquy she memorized when she was a child

Like her own two now sitting, waiting

To hear her speech

In the mini-van backseat

It seems that summers were always glorious

And winters full of discontent

Discontent

With the hard earth

Unyielding and unforgiving, that eases

Into something pliable come spring

With spring,

There was and is life

The fresh air filled with the scent of compassion.

Warmth

That bakes love in the loaves of community

Like bread that is broken for something holy

If you were to bite

Into the tiny flower buds,

The sharpness

Would taste of stinging newness, bitter

And bright. The winter’s

Discontent in turn turned bright and bitter

Spring

Reveals unfurling blood on the leaves

Last summer’s lynching

Lays dormant until the seasons’ change

The earth, the dirt,

Holds all things life

And all things death. Toxic

Industrial poison and

The unjustly shedding of bodily fluids

It all comes bubbling up in the

Spring,

Then baked like bread in the summer’s rays,

Hidden by leaves come fall,

And then

When winter rolls back around

There is discontent

In justice still not being won.

The death always comes with rebirth,

Just as the winter comes back to spring.

With it,

Another chance

For creation and the bodies

Of marginalized folks to find

Liberation

In the ashes of all that came before

Winters

Of discontent

Always made once again back into glorious summers

Then back again, then,

Sometimes,

Into glorious winters and summers of discontent

And yet,

The seasons of the years and of lives and deaths

Will forever change us as we continuously grow

Towards

An endless, unending season

Of radical love,

Of justice,

Of truth,

And peace.