Up and Down, Wright and Wrong

Poem by Elizabeth Berget

Down in Virginia, the cops are yelling
Get down on the ground
While up the street, the crowd is yelling
Hands up, Don’t Shoot
This falling and rising,
A threaded needle, mending the tear
A death, a resurrection

And meanwhile
Daunte Wright’s mother is on hold
Pleading with the officers,
With anyone,
To please pick her son up off the ground

And my friend is burying her baby
Who died too soon,
And I am watching her
Gently lay her son down
In his miniature casket
For the last time
While every primal
Cell and hormone within her
Is screaming
To pick up her baby,

And I know Mary
Watched her own son
Strung up in the air
Like an Easter ham
As her soul pleaded
With the soldiers, with God,
With anyone,
To please, take him down,
And even Eve,
Having fallen from the garden,
Fell down to her knees in the dirt,
To gently lay Abel’s head in her lap

And behind
All of these ups
And all of these downs
I see all of these mothers
With their empty arms,
Who have buried
Their sons deep down in the ground,
And now we wait with them
For the new life
To spring up,
In the mended kingdom,
Where birthed anew,
They will reach with outstretched arms
To pull their babies
Up to their chests again.

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Taken from Elizabeth’s Website with her permission: Read Her Work HERE