Heroes

8-7-20

12:26 p.m.

Phoenix, AZ

Heroes

We are endlessly the heroes of our stories,

It doesn’t seem to matter how tired

We must be getting, or who we’re fighting,

We’ve “fought a million battles, never lost a one,” *

We are Abel, and Jacob, and Abraham,

Never the murderer, tricked, or uncalled,

Noah, Joseph, the children walking out of Egypt,

Not the drowned, the liars, or the Pharaoh,

Defeatedly, the prophets tried to tell us,

And our parents listened and then tried to tell us,

Thousands of voices standing adjacent to our stories,

“The story is true – but that isn’t you,”

We are endlessly the heroes of our own stories,

And out for the blood of naysayers,

Like Christ, pulling out a chair and smiling,

“Come, sit, you poor, tired idiot,”

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*Biggest Thing That Man Has Ever Done – Woody Guthrie (1942)

*Cover photo by Aleisha Bear