THE MILLION MILE MARCH… CONTINUING AS WE SPEAK
Whenever i read pop opinion
about “the baby boomers,”
even though i came to earth
in the first flash
of the largest boom ever known
to mankind– not the fools
who say ‘oh so many babies born
from men home from war’
(they never mention
the poignant drive to try to make life
after having seen/made such death…)
No, our BOOOM! was the atomic bomb,
that one event that has ever hung over us
as the primal horrifying event of our lives…
i never recognize myself
or those i grew up with
when we were and are described
by the newspapers or
by politicians.
They did not live with us.
They did not stay with us.
They came whistle stop.
They came and left swiftly.
They did not struggle
with us.
As a result the media
the history writers
the politicians knew us
the way a person running
their hands through a bowl of water
says they really really know water…
as opposed to the fisherman
on the Great Lakes who pulls
and pulls through black night
waters that rise and obscure
even the oars; those who row
in sudden squall after squall
can be said to truly know
the temerity and savageness
of water. Thus, no contest.
Still and now today, these many years
long past sunrise and well into dusk,
i read and read about my peers,
my time of my time,
and still feel i am reading another
faulty anthropology of my tribe,
written by the strangely unobservant.
who often say we were carried everywhere,
that we were “privileged” by being born here,
that we all had “everything given to us,”
including all and every opportunity
to ‘pull ourselves up.’
i did not see this,
many of us did not see this,
for we/ and I
must have been sleeping or just too busy
spading earth, ironing shirts for others,
and working on the line, and being, you know,
“lazy” and all.
what i saw and did,
what so many of us
saw and did…
was walk for miles,
march for miles;
oh, how we walked
oh how we marched—
for civil rights,
for bus seats
and free bathrooms,
to end wars in grace,
for c.o.’s right
to serve with honor,
for women’s rights to earn
for their children,
for hungry mothers and fathers,
against poverty,
for biafra,
for amnesty for soldiers harmed or ill,
for love between souls
for the trees
for the carrier pigeon
for the whales
for the porpoises and dolphins.
the sunfish, the blue gill,
to be able to swim without
coming out barnacled with oil gobbets
smeared across our tender bodies.
As we were in the streets,
we were jeered from balconies,
for we were carrying our santitos
our banners of the Holy People,
blessed Mother and El Cristo Rey.
And still,
We walked across deserts
on the road to Chimayo
to dig the miracle dirt
to take home to those who were hurt;
we walked the tierra amarilla line,
we walked the picket lines
for men, for women needleworkers,
for packers, loaders and unloaders,
for tractor factory workers,
for farmers, real ones
who used their hands
and knew their horses
and used no bleating machines.
We marched for golden eagles,
against pollution,
against the detroit machine,
against the chicago mob,
against the hawks in congress,
for women’s choices for safe medicines,
and for birth control,
for parity for lettuce workers,
for “wet backs” to be called people,
just people, souls, just souls.
we marched against the crooked man
in the straight white house,
against the watergate hohum that
was newcrime by oldcriminals,
We marched to take back the night,
for gay rights,
to help, to hold, to heal,
to bring back clear water.
we marched to bring back air
that could not be seen,
that had no color to it.
we walked to bring back
a natural wilderness,
a world worth living in.
They said we were slackers,
for our bank accounts did not show
above their preferential waterline.
We just thought
we were hot-shot
high school graduates,
often first in our families,
and on our ways to nuptial masses in Nam,
for we lived in the non-velvet lined world.
we marched; we did not slog in drugs,
nor smell sweet air at sheltered enclaves.
We worked with our hands,
our backs, our blood
and our bones,
we who some who breathe some
strange gas, say we are…
“ the privileged generation.”
The upper ones, the single-eyed say
we “were born with silver spoons”
in our mouths. . .
with every opportunity
just ‘handed to us.’
But we see it differently:
we, born working class,
future corpses brought home
with stylish black body bag
waiting in the future.
we, often first of our families
to go to school without having
to stop for planting, cattle drives
or harvests
—we of the working building,
factory and creating class,
first to go to war,
we, the last to come home. . .
we are the ones who,
according to the barely sighted,
“had everything given to them.”
I write our history:
we were ‘given’ nothing,
‘granted’ nothing
compared to the gold granted
by way of birth to many many others.
They were given the ingots…
We hand forged the spades to try to dig
and we have fought for everything
we’ve gained…
not just for us, for kith and kin,
but for those as far across the world
as we have sight, which is very very far.
And like Laertes who cries out in joy
and drags down his heavy tasseled sword
from over the mantle
and rushes out to fight again,
even as an old man,
we are still here…
and we are still standing in love,
in brokenhearted love,
in heart broken… open…love,
protecting whatever we can touch of life
and earth, of humans and creatures,
of weather and water,
in as much just decency
and compassionate repair as we can.
thus we have learned
that love and kindness
are frail without also standing
in a fierce and fiery love,
an eternal love,
that is greater than
‘the time of our times’alone.
when people ask us,
why do you keep doing this?
why dont you ever give up?
we sometimes gently note:
Do you not recognize us?
the los bravos
who came to earth in service:
our ideas are not our ideas,
our words are not our words:
they are the ideas and the words
of the One who sent us.
—————-
“The Million Mile March… Continuing As We Speak” This poem from the manuscript La Pasionaria/ The Bright Angel: Collected Poems Of C.P. Estés 1960-2011 forthcoming from SoundsTrue Books 2013. This poem, CP Estés ©1978, 2011, all rights reserved.
CODA
Just to say, I’ve more stories about the 47% in coming days. I plan to put up as many as possible. I seem to, and most of my peers too, belong to several categories in the 47% of ‘national slackers,’ including being in the military where glass ceilings in income abound, and right now many of the army spouses with little children are living in deplorable conditions, some in run down one room motels. And yes, the very poor in the military with families often are ‘on the dole’ the term used by those with ‘balcony only views’. Food stamps. I cant say I understand that kind of blindness toward the vulnerable who are serving the country, but it is there. Has always been with us.