The Dawn of Our Own Good Day to Die

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.