Civil Disobedience

Do it scared.
With your knees quaking and raging.
Do it with trembling thumbs, ears sounding alarm bells, sirens in your eyes.
Do it because no one has to do it alone.
Do it in the cold, in the freezing rain, do it.
Wearing all your long underwear leggings one plastered over the other.
Do it without the LED hand warmers that didn’t get here in time.
Be still in the chaos.
Get down on your knees.
From the moment it starts until the moment it ends, he told us, it will be ceremony.
It is sacred, one shared heart held between twenty people.
Do it because you are angry.
Because you are small.
Do it with your head thundering through your foul heart.
Do it with your eyes open.
Bent by the hands holding yours.
Sing through the storm.
Do it while you fear it.
You have to earn stillness.
It’s simpler than what you’re afraid of.
Do it with pride. Mesmerized by human courage.
Do it stupid and small as you are.
Let the prayer of the possible tumble out your chapped throat.
The work is going to get harder, she said, so it has to be fun.
We have to trust each other, laugh together, tell stories
about our kids and our pets, and practice being uncool.
Practice in the cold basement of an old church, sandwiches on the table,
form a human chain singing, elbows twined together like atoms,
while the tenderest reverends, rabbis, and imams you know
pretend to be federal agents breaking your bonds.
Do it numb.
Do it sobbing.
With your voice torn.
Do it without knowing if you’ll survive it.
Because if you survive it, you’ll do it again.
Do it today, the Russian journalist said on the radio,
because tomorrow you won’t be able to do it.
Do it questioning everything, low to the ground, oxygenated,
with the honeylocusts spine-high in their dignity, silent witness of sidewalk.
Because using your body to say no is not optional.
Because you are stupid and small.
You must become water, she said, fluid and responsive.
You must become soil, darker and deeper than steel.
You must become wise, which means more silent than speaking.
Because you are not you.
Because You is bigger and vaster than any three-lettered word.
There’s a We here, in this tangle of breath, bones and bloodsong.
There’s a We in this vigil,
and a We when we sit down in the street,
there’s a We in the swirling chaos of claiming each other,
there’s a We that starts where you end,
and blurs where you begin, is the edges of you and the secrets of winter.
Turn your chin to the sky where a We migrates south for the season,
a We of mothers unsnatched from their cars,
a We of children feeling their father’s We weaving their hair,
and lovers making a We with their gorgeous furious bodies,
and these We-mittened hands inside your own hands.
Do it because you’re no longer the youngest
but feel so green, still, on this blue bumping earth.
Chase down your demons, your nerves and your stagnation,
chase down your shame, kiss them each on the lips
and say “I thought I loved you.”
Hold open the door for them as you follow them out.
You’re going together to an unfixed destination.
Traveling as a pack into a cradle of doubt.
Do it on one cup of coffee.
Do it taking deep breaths.
Do it arching a We of a back.
Don’t say Not this time,
or It’s not that I can’t, but
or Just in case.
Just in case, do it scared.
Do it while you can.