LET US RAISE OUR VOICES

by Cecil Morris

The Trump administration laid off thousands of federal health workers, dismissing senior leaders and top scientists in a purge that outside experts and former officials said would cause an immeasurable loss of expertise. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has suggested the layoffs could tame his department’s $1.8 trillion budget, but less than 1 percent of its spending goes to staff. —The New York Times, April 2, 2025

Let us raise our voices to those
who think no one deserves
anything they can’t afford,
not water, not air, not dirt. 

Let us raise our voices to those 
who think the only good trapeze act
is one performed with no net,
one with danger, real risk
of possible disaster
to focus the performance.

Let us raise our voices to those
who think we weaken

ourselves,
our community, our country
by subsidizing the refugee,
the halt, the blind, the ill, the poor
and their children, and farmers. 

Let us raise our voices to those
who think the egregiously wealthy
need shelters and protections, need
tax breaks and subsidies, too,
who think their wealth will trickle down,
a golden shower on the poor.

Let us raise our voices to those
who think that only the fittest
should survive, who really think
that God gives to each what they
have earned, who think they know
the will of God and understand
the covenant of just desserts.

Let us raise our voices.

Cecil Morris, a retired high school English teacher and Pushcart and Best of the Net nominee, has poems appearing in The Ekphrastic Review, Hole in the Head Review, The New Verse News, Rust + Moth, and elsewhere. His debut poetry collection At Work in the Garden of Possibilities (Main Street Rag) will come out in 2025.  He and his wife, mother of their children, divide their year between the cool coast of Oregon and the relatively hot Central Valley of California.

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