Love your neighbor.
Even the loud one with the truck flags and no brake lights.
Even the banker.
Even the bureaucrat.
Even the kid at the drive-thru who got your order wrong again.
Pay your taxes,
but don’t forget to ask
why billionaires don’t.
Plant tomatoes.
Support public schools.
Wave at the mail carrier.
Vote.
Raise your kids to tell the truth,
then tell them why the world sometimes punishes people who do.
Don’t let that make them bitter.
Let it make them brave.
Live as if healthcare were a right.
Live as if no one should die of a treatable disease
in the richest country on Earth.
Live as if your neighbor’s insulin is your business.
(It is.)
Stand up for public libraries.
For school lunches.
For clean water.
For the kid who comes out in a small town.
For the mother who can’t afford day care.
For the dad who took a second job to afford rent.
For the old man choosing between heat and food.
Get mad.
But not so mad you stop seeing people.
Especially the ones who disagree with you.
Listen longer than is comfortable.
Then speak clearly, without apology:
No, I don’t believe poor people are lazy.
Yes, I think workers deserve a living wage.
No, I don’t think guns are more sacred than children.
Yes, I believe Black lives matter.
No, I don’t think being queer is a threat to anyone’s freedom.
Yes, I think women are people.
No, I don’t think corporations should write our laws.
Yes, I still believe in democracy, even when it’s messy.
Protect the wild things:
the wetlands, the whistleblowers,
the bees, the books they try to ban.
Refuse cruelty,
even when it’s dressed in law.
Refuse greed,
even when it calls itself freedom.
Refuse hate,
even when it wears a flag.
Don’t just resist.
Build.
Build coalitions.
Build gardens.
Build unions.
Build broadband in the holler.
Build policy with working people in the room.
Don’t get cynical.
Cynicism is a luxury belief.
Hope is cheaper, but costs more effort.
Hope plants itself anyway.
So should you.
Love the country like you’d love a sick child—
not blindly,
but with everything you’ve got,
because you know it can get better.
Walk into rooms where you’re outnumbered
and say it anyway:
We can take care of each other.
We can build something decent.
We are worth saving.
Be stubborn in joy.
Radical in kindness.
Unyielding in truth.
Start with what you know:
We belong to one another.
Let’s act like it.
Alex Silvestri is a Michigan poet whose work is rooted in place, nature, community, and the ordinary experiences of daily life. This poem was inspired in part by Wendell Berry’s writing on community, neighborliness, stewardship, and our obligations to one another.
