This is a poem from a few years ago, written upon hearing of the death of a long-time New Jersey activist. News came as I was working my way through a book on poetic forms. The sestina, according to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, is “a lyrical fixed form consisting of six 6-line usually unrhymed stanzas in which the end words of the first stanza recur as end words of the following five stanzas in a successively rotating order and as the middle and end words of the three verses of the concluding tercet.” It was a challenge to make this work, and it’s strained in places. And the consternation continues that the spacing gets thrown off when I transfer it to Substack. Imagine these seven bits single spaced.
Sestina in Memory of Activist Leigh
I would like to believe that God exists,
but each day more evidence is building
against it. Leigh slips down the stairs,
is gone in an instant. Now where is her voice?
She echoes in the voices of millions
still working for a world of justice and peace.
Energy isn’t destroyed; it changes. Peace,
then, sends Leigh’s exuberance to exist
in the beating, powdery wings of millions
of blue metalmark butterflies, building
a force that carries her on. We’re one voice,
we millions, fierce and calling on the stars.
I want to believe in a God that stirs
our higher passions, moves us toward peace.
But the fascism of Trump, that voice
stirs fire in the bellies where meanness exists,
while they collect their vast fortunes for building
a movement of hate, growing by millions,
to con people into cheering for billions
in corporate tax breaks and unpaid shares
of taxes that won’t fund health care, building
affordable homes, food for poor kids, peace.
They claim to be Christians, think God exists
in their image. They give evil and greed a voice.
What Would Jesus Do? Which hateful voice
would he echo? Which MAGA sneer, of the millions,
would he adopt as his own? What child exists
that he would let starve? “Fuck thy neighbor! Who cares?
That Turn the other cheek crap was piece
of fiction. I didn’t mean it. Building
compassion is for pussies. But building
a world where gold rules – now that’s our God’s voice
talking.” I was raised on the Prince of Peace,
but my heart has broken into millions
of shards. God let Leigh die on the stairs,
but evil, wrapped in His name, still exists.
I hear Leigh saying, “Keep building a strong voice;
heaven is filled with millions of powerful stars.”
With or without the peace of believing God exists.
Originally published in the New Jersey ACLU’s annual dinner’s program.
