Poem for Wednesday

Black Family Pledge
By Maya Angelou

Because we have forgotten our ancestors our children no longer give us honor.

Because we have lost the path our ancestors cleared, kneeling in perilous undergrowth, our children cannot find their way.

Because we have banished the God of our ancestors, our children can not pray.

Because the long wails of our ancestors have faded beyond our hearing, our children cannot hear us crying.

Because we have abandoned our wisdom of mothering and fathering, our befuddled children give birth to children they neither want nor understand.

Because we have forgotten how to love, the adversary is within our gates, and holds us up to the mirror of the world, shouting, Regard the loveless.

Therefore, we pledge to bind ourselves again to one another;

To embrace our lowliest,
To keep company with our loneliest,
To educate our illiterate,
To feed our starving,
To clothe our ragged,
To do all good things, knowing that we are more than keepers of our brothers and sisters. We are our brothers and sisters.

In honor of those who toiled and implored God with golden tongues, and in gratitude to the same God who brought us out of hopeless desolation,

We make this pledge.

--------

Home, after leftovers for lunch and a final swing through Gettysburg -- both the battlefield and Boyd's Bear Country, which regrettably did not have the Wizard of Oz ornament set on post-holiday sale but they did have nearly every other ornament in the place, including two different varieties of penguins. The skies were overcast though the sun kept breaking through and the battlefields were muddy but traversible, and we walked up and down the hills and along the old stone farm fences.


The Mansion at Mount Hope Winery, where A Dickens of a Christmas is performed.


Even the fake food looked good. They were serving free bites of ham and samples of mulled wine and cider, but most of the wines had to be purchased...


...in the Carriage House Wine Shoppe, which has this lovely ceiling above its massive Christmas tree. In addition to the RenFaire and the Dickens performance, they have a Poe event at Halloween, hence his face in the painting.


Though the fountain decor changes, the exit looks the same all year.

Home of course means piles of unpacking and laundry and replying to mail and trying desperately to get organized, at which so far I have had only limited success, though I have managed to download the Doctor Who Christmas special so am pleased about that. The cats are either happy to see us or happy to have empty luggage to sit in...well, actually right now Rosie is asleep on the couch she never sleeps on because left a warm spot there when he was flipping through the mail. Thank you for the poetry, and thanks to everyone who sent cards! Happy Kwanzaa!