What Is It About My People!

 What Is It About My People!

 

 

What is it about my people

You don’t understand?

Is it our journey from

Ancient, Biblical times?

Our dialogue with G-d

Seeking mercy on your behalf,

First Noah, then Abraham?

 

What is it about my people

You insist to misjudge?

Is it our stubborn refusal

To follow the crowd?

Our passage through history

And surely through time

As persecuted people

Who fall and get up

And dust off your hatred and

Continue to stand?

 

What is it about my people

You fail to love?

Is it our tragedies

That caused us to shine?

 

I’ll tell you this much:

count to ten, and I 

will hide. When time is up

You’ll find me

with a rifle defending

my land, or in the glory

of a Nobel Prize for

A poem or medical discovery,

You will find me wherever

We can stamp our mark.

 

So once again my

Fellow human, 

                   What?

What is it

About my people

You cannot stand?

 

Alexandra Goodwin

 

Alexandra Goodwin is a transplant from Buenos Aires, Argentina, and as such, nourishes her soul like an air plant without apparent roots. As she works toward semi-retirement, she has taken residence in her imaginary tree house above her mango tree in Florida. She has written a novel and three poetry books: one with her own photographs, one in Spanish, and one an adult coloring book with Haiku poems.

Her essays and poems have appeared in the Miami Herald; Dare to be Authentic Volume 1; The Light Between Us; Live, Love, Laughter, a PEN Anthology; citaenlasdiagonales.com; and Our Town News.