A Call to Action

A Call to Action

Whereas we used to do sit-ins at City Council meetings
to demand parking permits for our oft-neglected neighborhood
and we would roam the streets, armed with orange garbage bags
picking up broken fragments of beer bottles and unopened
newspapers, it’s been quiet the last couple of years.
The community garden has been planted for three years now,
the dragonfly swoops and dips in the Chinook winds,
the streets are reasonably clean even though we have not
visited them in great detail in two years. We see each other,
but only to say a brief hello, nothing urgent, and I kind of
miss that sense of camaraderie and joint purposefulness.
Now we are awakening again, graffiti splatters across our neighborhood,
ugly graffiti in words, not just aesthetics, my bicycle stolen.
Last night at 2 a.m. I reviewed membership records as part of the
gathering of the troops. We will rouse ourselves to exorcise this
ugly energy from around us. No doubt, in the process,
we will rediscover ourselves.