Many years ago, in what feels like another life time all together, I heard a man named Wei Jingsheng speak at a lecture on human rights. His words, about being a dissident and an activist, about years spent in prison, stayed with me. He spoke of words and why they matter, why we must use our voices in times of trouble. On phrase stuck with me--A million feathers can sink a ship. 
I went home after the lecture and I composed this poem. I think it appropriate for today's world. In my own country, America. we will need a million feathers to right the ship and sail towards a more perfect union. And maybe, it helps to know that in all countries around the world, people, heroes, have taken up the struggle. Often at great cost to themselves.


A Calligraphy of the Heart
For Wei Jingsheng
 
 
When they took your pen, your paper, it was
because they feared the truth of you.
They wanted you to believe in silence.
But the silence had a manner of speaking.
You listened and wrote the words inside of yourself
until the calligraphy of your heart became
a wildfire, a conflagration,
a burning so strong no cell could contain it.
You wrote into the silence on toilet paper,
with a contraband pencil, with the drops of your blood.
The words flying from you like cranes,
their flight more powerful
then a thousand armed men.