E Pluribus

If you executed a kick-ball-change and a swing to the left,

Would there be, like an old variety-show gag,

A lady revealed, split up the middle?

Is it Clara, Angel of the battlefield,

Ministering to boys on both sides,

Her path forged with the sign of the red cross?

Or perhaps Harriet,           

Code name “Moses”

leading her people home?  

Or Lucretia, Susan or Elizabeth,

Standing up for the rights of their sex

As well as for abolition?

Or one of the passionate women

Who disguised themselves as men,

Fighting alongside their brothers and husbands for their cause?

Or those who stayed home,

Worried, resigned to the wait,

Children thronged round their weary feet?

Or the thousands of slaves whose names we do not know,

Mothers, daughters, forced to bear children

And watch them be carried away?

Or the long-suffering Mary, who, finally beginning to relax,

was still mid-chuckle at the actor’s antics

When suddenly be-spattered with your red blood?

Tango back to the right, and slide into your memorial,

So many women and what we have

Is your profile.

7/31/20