A Poet's Lament

POETRY FOR INCLUSION

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Dear America,

I write to you with a poetic and passionate voice imploring us to revisit and reflect on our identity.

I long for the days where diverse perspectives were met with sweet fellowship and warm embrace.

But now hearts have become like sour grapes losing their zest for connection and nourishment.

And the palms of thanksgiving are replaced with entitled minds.

We are fact checking lived experiences and allowing keyboards to do more talking than our mouths.

We have become self-righteous sheep walking in a pasture of idols whose food is rich with nutritious lies.

I pray for the day that we would learn from the apparition of our past and progress toward freedom’s promise.

But our feet remain stuck in the cement of false narratives.

And our eyes are blinded by the bloodshed of evil’s delight.

Injustice is the boulder that is rolling over our land of liberty with force.

But

I still believe in the hands of humanity that point to the heavens for direction.

And I listen to the string instruments that play and pray for peace.

May we all strive for One America!

Dr Clark is an outpatient psychiatrist at Prisma Health-Upstate and clinical associate professor at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine, Greenville. He served on the American Psychiatric Association’s Task Force to Address Structural Racism Throughout Psychiatry, and he currently serves as the Diversity and Inclusion section editor and advisory board member for Psychiatric Times^TM.