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City of Songs
History wrote refrains here--
The rattle of carts, the chime of churchbells,
The muffled drum of famed footsteps
Reverberating on our cobbled streets;
Old rhymes writ with images
Glimpsed through a rippled mirror--
Songs of remembrance.
Today is an unwritten poem
Crackling in the nighttime air.
Rhythms ride the streets on Harleys
Staccato beat on 'high',
And couplets crowd the corners
With their conversations
In raucous bar-time voices.
Monuments punctuate the traffic
That flows in measured time,
Crawling in iambic meter
(Stop, start. Stop, start.)
Toward the beltway's perpetual rondo
That repeats, repeats, repeats
Each day and night.
But the river remembers a slower song
Flowing like an eecummings poem
Unhindered and peaceful
Past lordly houses stacked
Like syllables in haiku formation,
Shouldering for space along its banks.
We are tomorrow's unwritten poems:
Homeless and builder,
Tourist and truck driver,
Lawyer and artist-- all of us
Speaking our souls to cellphones
And singing to the empty air.
Who listens for our voices?
Who speaks the soul of the city?
Who is history's troubadour, the future's oracle?
Alexandria is an unwritten poem:
Pick up your pen.
It's our turn now.
-Mary McElveen-
March 25, 2007
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Half Turn
If the road through our city were a ribbon,
it would spool out along the river
in a silken band, twisting and turning
upon itself in a sumptuous tangle
of history, culture and accomplishment:
a spectacular Mobius strip
of memory and vision.
We are artists on that road, each of us,
making art, making laws, making room, making time
for this community, our city,
Enriched by and enriching lives
of artistic visions made real,
of daily realities fathered
by our fantastic dreams.
Our road, this twisted ribbon,
holds the nexus of life and art:
the half turn that blends the possible and the certain,
concrete and ephemeral, imagination and creation
in the self-renewing, continuous path
we trace each day
in Alexandria.
Mary McElveen
Alex Awards,
November 2007
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Wind from the River
(Freedmen's Cemetery, May 2007)
The wind from the river breathes a lament
Over the grass under which they lie,
And our sighs blend and fill this place:
This grave of innocence
Where father, mother, child
Lie gently wrapped in this free soil.
The wind from the river bade them come
And claim anew a world they'd been denied--
A place to dream, and hope, and work:
A land they believed in
Where father, mother, child
At last stood equal to their brothers.
The wind from the river stirs memory's flame
And flickering shadows rise like ghosts.
What answer can we give them,
The people of this place,
Father, mother, child,
Who lie unmarked, unnamed?
Death knows no limit, time, nor place,
Yet hope springs up like a summer breeze
With promise of healing rain.
This family, knit of freedom,
Father, mother, child-
Shall, in the end, prevail.
May we all abide in peace.
-Mary McElveen-
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One American High School
We are many; we are one.
We are brown-black-red-white-yellow
and none of the above.
We are lightning, thunder, sun and rain
stardust and moonshine,
clouds and fresh breezes.
wise and foolish, intertwined.
We are music
that flows, that marches,
that swings,
that dances to its own drumbeat.
We forge a path, and yet we follow.
We are children; we are men and women.
We are in between.
We are fearless and afraid,
Articulate and tongue-tied,
confident and hesitant.
We are tomorrow, we are history,
We are the exquisite intersection of generations.
This place lets us go and holds us captive
Even as we fly free.
We are the promise
Made to our parents,
Made to sons and daughters:
The gift of learning, freely given:
T.C. Williams,
One American high school.
Mary McElveen
October 14, 2007
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