Shape of Summer (After the Fall)

It can be easy to see the division, and to see the storm on the horizon as a catastrophe, as something that will break us. Didn't we all see this coming? Didn't we feel it in our bones long before it came? This time we have a real chance to start fixing it.

The Shape of Summer

Windswept vistas carry colors

A heart breaks across the horizon

Division given and offense taken

With justice left bleeding in the dust

You can hear the thunder rumbling

See that first bolt out of the blue

Arcing slowly splintering brightly

Carving out that ozone hue

You mind the gaps

But you are mindless of the canyons

Of the great wastes and reaching rocks

Tumultuous rivers of poison deadly

Deep places you dare not touch

Rocks still painted with the blood

Roots still stained with crimson sins

So far in the past but still chasing us in the wind

That shadow looms large

That dust-bowl

We watch that storm within us turn without

We take a breath

What a privilege

As we stand against this precipice

With vertigo and knocking knees

So many lost along the way

This Summer bleeds against my skin

It suffocates, it pulls me

In and under, a labyrinth

Of dunes and crags and badlands

Nothing good can grow from this

We struggle tangled in the tainted roots

These foundations are not built on stone

But hate and backs torn up with blood

These sins aren't ours

But we cannot drown out the echoes

These deeds are dead

But we still feel every one

Season after season they bring the rain

The flood that feeds unholy truths

Prejudice and ignorance spiral down

And up comes hot air from the ground

You can put the memory down

But Summer rains will always come

Shadows stalk on somber ground

There will, there must, come a flood

And when the rains have ebbed

And the waters have receded

The dry spell will begin

And the Summer heat will be beating

One spark is all that it might take

One stubborn wisp of mirage-flame

One act of violence done with hate

One more son set in the ground

Season after season we till this field

We spill this blood, we cry these tears

Perhaps it is time to look within

To search beneath, to uproot sin

Let the wind guide us into those caves

To seek what monsters still remain

To smite the shadow that holds us fast

And undo the curse upon this land

Let the shape of Summer be reborn

And the wind sing out a brand new song

Let the storm of justice soak this world

And bring a bounty for the Fall

Each of us has a responsibility to get down there in the muck and mire of our own hearts and of our systems and our history, to uproot the evil that prevents justice and equality. You want a bountiful harvest, you have to plant seeds. We cannot let hatred, racism or authoritarianism become our legacy after all this time fighting.