2019 – Sinners and Saints

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The year – not an eventful one
It brought no sense of urgency
Climate fear overdone
But there were all these birds, you see

Sweet swallow songs unsung at dawn
One third gone – no one would save
Three billion trills grown still
Buried deep in David Koch’s grave

Do we mourn all who have passed
He funded an anti-science lobby
Maybe some people should not last
Will we miss Robert Mugabe?

Or Li Peng, the butcher of Beijing
Juan Corona, serial migrant murderer
Ben Ali, Tunisian would-be king
And let me go furtherer

Ross Perot and Lyndon LaRouche
(who tended toward the Nazi-ish)
I guess the next rhyme should be douche
But that just seems too obvious

Senator Thad Cochran is no more
If you were white he’d put the fix in
And on James McCord let’s close the door
He’s finally back with Nixon

Yes, the Bad Guys lost a few of their crew
Yet faster still seems our descent to dark
But then I see the love in what so many do
And recall the bending of the moral arc

Disabled parents lost Carrie Ann Lucas
A champion for their cause
Hell on wheels, rare and ruthless
Overturning unjust laws

At one hundred Frances Crowe protested
Persistent, passionate, tough
Asked how many times she was arrested
She shrugged and said, “Not enough!”

She was sharecropper-shack raised
Risked her life to rise from there
Unita Blackwell remained unfazed
First black Mississippi mayor

Luis Alvarez aided 9/11 responders
Tejshree Thapa exposed Bosnian mass rape
Jan O’Herne spoke spoke of the horror forced upon her
For Comfort Women there was no escape

The world is better that they were here
Death does not diminish
Courage is acting despite fear
Their work is for us to finish