“Let My People Go” by Mark G. Hammerschick

 Let my people go.
 The time is upon us 
 to consider parallel congruity
 leavening bread on the run
 stuffing cotton in bales
 stretched taut like ragged mahogany hides
 in jagged shafts of rusted shackles.
 Go, go tell it on the mountain
 they will not be judged
 by the color of their skin 
 but by the content of their character.
 Go down Moses
 down below where baptism rivers flow
 low, low, low 
 in a Mississippi flow.
 Where did the dream defer to?
 Why is it that good fences make good neighbors?
 Black and white
 White and black
 Stark, Dark, Sharp
 with desiccated remnants
 of days lived in neighborhoods
 where even spiders did no go.
 Flags, flags, everywhere flags
 thirteen stars 
 with nowhere to go
 yet go they do, on and on and on…
 until a photon struck 
 and the light emerged and the dream was born again
 rising on up, rise, rise up
 Ezekial has his wheel
 amazing graces all around
 and in the end
 those dreams collide
 merge, mingle, and mold
 jello memories of family
 folded into the strands of time.
 Now is the Time
 Now is the Yes
 Now the truth
 Now the love 

---