Drumbeat

To fiery Du Bois,
who,
in the midst of a war
against those who shot
when they didn’t see the whites
of their I’s,

wrote about the soul suppressed
in way his eyes were trained to see,
to train those who were blinded by
a lie.

To you who died before the March,
and paced your own determined march
to the beat of a different drummer,
to fight a present
that confined your army
to a past.

To you,
who bound the past
and seized the future
with the drumbeat of your pen,

your drumbeat lives again.