On This Day

On This Day

Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.

            —Abraham Lincoln, 27 February 1860

On this day in an election year

ungainly Abe stood up, ill-dressed,

and addressed the burning issue

of the day.  He told us what we knew

was right but feared those who crowed

louder and cowed the cowardly shadows

of our selves to silence rather than rock

someone else’s boat lest waves

make our own lives tippy.

At the end of his speech the crowd rose

to its feet.  Three months later he won

the nomination that made him president,

perhaps our greatest, and the first of four

brought down by assassins too cowardly

to let a good man live.

Have we learned what he taught?

Do we believe that “right makes might”

that an honest man is greater than a strong?

Or do we cower underneath the politically correct,

even when our own souls shout

that we are wrong?

                              —Donnell Hunter

                                          27 February 2012