Freedom flows like water through our fingers,

clear and cold and living,

and we cup our hands to drink its ancient promise,

taste the iron of its struggle,

and the salt of those who bled to hold this

shapeless thing that shapes us.

 

Yet we let it dry to careless trickles,

for already tyrants pace at our borders and within,

and divert democracy’s foaming flow,

to the arid desert of tyranny where

we drop from citizen to subject.

 

We are the river and the dam,

the current and the stone,

the ocean and the wave,

and we must understand:

freedom is motion—seize it,

or deliver ourselves to the stagnant pool,

where no waters run, and there is death.

 

6/9/2025