by Jennifer Hernandez
For the crew members who lost their lives in the tragic crash of the Mexican tall ship into the Brooklyn Bridge. The ship, Cuauhtémoc, was named after the last Aztec emperor.
Sometimes the power goes out.
Sometimes, it’s smallpox.
The most inconsequential events
can change the course of a river,
the course of a life.
We never know
where the journey will end.
Nor when.
The leader this morning
might be gone by nightfall.
Through it all, the currents
keep pushing us forward.
Each moment we are closer
to the finale. So we must
choose to resist
with all our might.
Like Cuauhtémoc—
to never give up,
never give in,
never compromise
who we are and
what we believe
to be true.
We must don the fairy lights,
wave the big, beautiful flag.
We must stand on the bow,
watch as the sunset plays
between clouds at dusk,
glimmers on the water’s surface.
Life is fragile.
Life is glorious.
La vida siempre
vale la pena vivirla.
Jennifer Hernandez lives in Minnesota where she teaches immigrant youth and writes poetry, flash, and creative non-fiction. Once again, her recent writing has been colored by her distress at the dangerous nonsense that appears in her daily news feed. She is marching with her pen. Pushcart-nominated, her work appears in such publications as Sleet Magazine, Heron Tree, Northern Eclecta, and Silver Birch Press. She is working on a chapbook of hybrid writing about teaching as a political act.
