I Woke Up One Morning

I woke up one morning In a country I didn't know I was a stranger, a foreigner And I had no right to be Who I was I was lost And alone And I wandered through the reasoning Of why men do the things they do And I couldn't find any answers I kept tripping over barbed-wire hate Cutting into the color of my skin and the Fragility of my once fervently held Beliefs Of what the world was all about I came to question Everything There was nothing sacred In the meanness of spirit That corrodes the unenlightened Tin-panned heart yearning For some travesty of Salvation Bleeding, but undeterred I crossed over Into another realm Of being I am who I am now I have awakened They will not take me away from me No matter what they do To stop the human spirit From its inevitable climb to Redemption The haters will be overcome They always have They always will The truth is bigger than any of us Will ever know or see Let go of fear It is an illusion and a lie Hang on to love It will always lead you where you Wish you were and ultimately Need To be. ~ Laurence Overmire (Previously published in Moments Before Midnight Anthology: Oregon Poets Write for Ecological, Social, Political, and Economic Justice, Aug.2018)