After being asked to prepare a poem for our school's Annual VDay Presentation, I was listening to Georgia Congresswoman Lucy McBath speak on The New Yorker Radio Hour and was awe-struck by this woman's poise and story. I knew my poem would be about her.
AN ODE TO LUCY McBATH by Leslie B. Patient
I sing an ode to the freshman
Congresswoman from Georgia’s Sixth Congressional District
Who lost her only son seven years ago
To gun violence
In a parked car at a Florida gas station
His music too loud
His looks too threatening
And in three and a half minutes
A fearful grown man who felt he had to
Stand his Ground
shot ten times into the car
shot ten times into the car
of an unarmed seventeen-year-old whose music was too loud
I sing an ode to the murdered boy’s mother
Lucy McBath
Who made an appeal to the judge
Who held the life of her son’s murderer in the balance
“Do not seek the death penalty,” she said.
“I do not want his family to suffer as my family has suffered.”
“I will not bear the burden of playing God.”
“I believe in forgiveness.”
I sing an ode to Lucy McBath
Who campaigned for Congress on gun reform in a district full of hunters
Whose constituents heard her story and the Millenial vote resounded
We seek common sense
We seek communication over violence
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| Georgia's 6th District Congresswoman Lucy McBath |
I sing an ode to Lucy McBath
A two-time breast cancer survivor and a grieving mother
Who said she wanted to look beyond her own tragedy
To represent all those suffering in her district
To listen to all her constituents
Black and white
Men and women
The healthy and the invalid
The elderly and the young
I sing an ode to Lucy McBath
Who is the face of a New America
Who recognizes the paradoxes of life
Who knows pain
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| Shanequa Gay's "La Pieta" |
And doesn’t hide it
Who realizes the sanctity of life
But values choice.
Who wants gun reform
But upholds the Second Amendment
Who looks at life through a rational lens
But is not afraid to show emotion
Who knows real struggle
But uses her pain to inspire hope
She lives paradox, a mother with no earthly child
She embodies the suffering Madonna
Raising her dead son in her arms
A Pieta
For a new century
This mother in pain
Turns her tears into testimony
There is a reason Liberty and Justice
Take on the form of a woman
And now she sits in the congressional chamber
Among other mothers who
Know heartache
Other women who know the bitter taste
of oppression, injustice, disrespect, assault
But who believe in the power of the people
To look beyond the horizon
Women who know patience is an essential virtue
Women who know patience is the key to making lasting progress
She had the courage to campaign
She had the wits to win
And I have faith that Lucy McBath
With her sisters in White and Red and Blue
will transform a chamber
That has been an echoing cavern off inaction
Into a body of beating, living, mother’s hearts.
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