We had not intended to be here.
Our goal
was change the world,
never to be merely chaperones at the end.
But defeats and retreats
transformed resilience
that often felt like revolution
into recovery that took too long.
When we stood again,
we sometimes seemed smaller
and fewer
and slipping into silence
while our world required us
to grow large and multiply
and share what we believed
out loud and lyrically.
Neither can we stand here
singing as if we were born anew;
the story that we tell
should be a long hard look
at why we lost,
how we lost,
and end with what we learned.
We are evolved
by what we do believe,
and how we have engaged,
and who we have loved along the way.
We are evolved
to continue
purposeful,
digging for dangerous truth,
evolved to pull on our boots,
to sally forth until the dawn
of our own good day to die.
