The Courage All Around (revised)

Late-night honest
with myself
My boy shames me
The courage he shows
drumming at the Metro
Spare change pours in
Folded bills drifting like
snow covering his lap

Ten years old, first
sharing a buck
with a woman who asks,
then shooing her away
when she won’t stop
asking for more

He goes about his business,
a lionheart tending his
pride of intentions,
while I flinch at the work
before me, at stepping up
before you, at speaking my piece

But where he’s heading,
where heart and skill
and the company of others,
the company of you,
colleagues with an instinct
to be movement and reach

we can believe in,
that place, that thought, swells
my heart The world you will build
beckons and beguiles
and because the heart is
a complicated thing
I feel no shame here
I feel the courage all around

Occupy (revised)

Understand the wait
for what it is.
There will be no great
leap forward.
That debate is over.
The throng does
not march toward
ordained fate.

There is simply each of us,
brave and determined, or wavering,
longing for movement,
for the embrace of comrades,
and there is also
the hard places ahead.

So, it behooves us to wish
each other well,
to mourn our fallen,
to fight like hell
for all the rest,
to occupy what
will come next.