And still I rise…

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I’ll rise.

That’s a quote from one of my favorite poems, the one by Maya Angelou. I don’t know if she was thinking about me when she wrote it, but I like to think so. Like me, she shows resilience, and that is a good thing to have nowadays. It’s exhausting trying to survive in this world. Not that it was ever easy, but when you were dealing with Greeks and Romans, those empire builders, you knew what you were getting. Battles of utter ferocity until one side was beaten to a pulp, everyone dead.

Nowadays people hide their ferocity and don’t obey the rules of combat. They sneaky and self-righteous. Those are the ones I really can’t stand. They are more ruthless than those who wage war as a profession. And they smile out the sides of their mouths. Do I sound bitter? Perhaps I am. These folks are the hardest to resist, and I have trouble trying to come back after they’ve destroyed me.

We never know how high we are

Till we are called to rise;

And then, if we are true to plan,

Our statures touch the skies—

The Heroism we recite

Would be a daily thing,

Did not ourselves the Cubits warp

For fear to be a King—

Now Emily Dickinson had an interesting idea about the potential to rise up and to show our worth. She felt people should, in fact, rise, that everyone could do things that were important if it weren’t for their fear of failing. I imagine her writing these lines, but taking time to look upward, gaze rising to match her belief in human values. She mixed this type of poem with others that called to an afterlife or silence, so she reminds me of myself. Maybe that’s why her verses appeal to me. There is no sense of final defeat, the words and their hope will rise again. Definitely to my liking.

Morning at Great Pond by Mary Oliver.

I like this poem too, and feel a special bond with this writer of bird lives, movements, wings. Mary could make magic out of anything in nature, and something emerges from something then goes somewhere… by this I mean everything is moving and might disappear from sight, but it returns, and we get to rise with the words.

The creatures there

are dark flickerings

you make out

one by one

as the light lifts —

See how you’re pulled outward and inward, but aren’t left to drown, aren’t abandoned. Yet it’s your decision to discern the reason. You make out the forms, they lift you as the light lifts, which is a rather odd verb in this context but at least sounds promising. Then the painting continues to charge and recharge the natural body as the images are painted on the imagination:

great blue herons,

wood ducks shaking

their shimmering crests —

and knee-deep

in the purple shallows

a deer drinking:

There is a trembling here, but nothing like fear, because the textured vision, the sense of water as movement toward somewhere, pulls you up from where you might have left it all in darkness. Watching revives you, returns what you’ve misplaced, sends you upward, rising:

as she turns

the silver water

crushes like silk,

shaking the sky,

and you’re healed then

from the night, your heart

wants more, you’re ready

to rise and look!

You are risen, then:

Hallelujah!

Healed and ready, circling upward.

Andra Day has a song I’d use as my theme song if it were possible to have one. This one sometimes starts going through my head and I sing it without knowing all the words. Maybe this singer also had me in mind? I’d be thrilled if that were so. Sometimes the work I do, the things that are in my job description, I need a little encouragement. I want to accomplish my task alongside someone else. That’s not too much to ask, is it? After all, I’m in this for the long haul. So sure, Andra, I’m with you and hope you feel the same way I do.

When the silence isn't quiet

And it feels like it's getting hard to breathe

And I know you feel like dying

But I promise we'll take the world to its feet

And move mountains

Bring it to its feet

And move mountains

And I'll rise up

I'll rise like the day

I'll rise up

I'll rise unafraid

I'll rise up

And I'll do it a thousand times again

It’s just that I am unable to stop at a thousand times. I have been assigned my role forever.

Now, rather than recite yet another poem by Mary Oliver, “Heron Rises From The Dark, Summer Pond,” I’ll just note that she really insists on the power of herons, and I won’t fault her for that. After all, it’s such an elegant bird and it does resemble writing as it moves…

So heavy

is the long-necked, long-bodied heron,

always it is a surprise

when her smoke-colored wings

open

and she turns

from the thick water,

from the black sticks

of the summer pond,

and slowly

rises into the air

and is gone.

There I go quoting again, but with lines like these I have no choice. Mary makes the bird vital for everything, including immortality:

Then, not for the first or the last time,

I take the deep breath

of happiness, and I think

how unlikely it is

that death is a hole in the ground,

how improbable

that ascension is not possible,

though everything seems so inert, so nailed

These things I’m telling you maybe are not easy to understand. After all, you don’t know me from Adam, do you? Would it help to say I appear with a certain symbolism in Hans Christian Andersen and I’m mentioned in a story by the Argentinian Jorge Luis Borges? Perhaps not. Should I describe my physical appearance? That too has several variants. Maybe I should just get to the point.

I’m someone who is always needed, and certainly after devastating events occur. I’m someone you can’t afford not to believe in. I’m a good model to follow. Like I said earlier, I’m resilient. I can be red, or purple, or gold. I can be on fire or be just fire. I’d prefer to be water, to flow forth, but that is more difficult to manage. I can be destroyed, cremated, assigned new meanings, but the point to keep in mind is that I will still rise, I will not die.

I will not die, even with all the evil that is trying to render me a pile of ashes. I will not, and refuse to, die. Even if some think it’s a good thing to spray paint important buildings gold and censor difference. However, I AM different and out of my ashes I rise.

You see, even a phoenix gets political when it’s necessary. So don’t worry, I will fix things.