and all around is hate and fear,
then I’ll fight back with all I have:
my voice, my pen, my vote.
When waters rise and forests blaze,
injustice stirs your righteous rage,
then muster through the moral haze
your voice, your pen, your vote!
Ghosts of those who went before us
surely mourn what might have come
from battles bravely waged and won
with their voice, their lives, their vote.
It’s ours to persist—no!—to insist—
to demand, protest, resist—
now is the hour; seize our power:
our voice, our pen, our vote!
Author's note: September 14 was National Voter Registration Day in the United States. As noted in historical analyses like those by David Blight in The New York Times (Op-Ed 11/5/2018): In his “Sources of Danger to the Republic,” in which he skewered Andrew Johnson as an “unmitigated calamity of a president under whom, for now the nation must stagger,” Frederick Douglass expressed this maxim regarding political institutions and republics: Our government may at some time be in the hands of a bad man. When in the hands of a good man it is all well enough. But we ought to have our government so shaped that even when in the hands of a bad man we shall be safe. Blight concludes his op-ed with the statement: Our only weapons: our voice, our pen and our vote.
Ellen Jeri’s poems are often prompted by the world around her—animal, vegetable, or political.