THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT REVOLVE AROUND YOU

THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT REVOLVE AROUND YOU

by Robin Shwedo

©: Robin Shwedo, 1995



The Revolution will not revolve around you.

It revolves around

people without jobs who want to work

who need to work

who strive to work

who’ve given up trying to work

within a system that strives to keep them down

while saying “no more safety net”

while letting children go hungry

while giving themselves humungous raises

and building more bombs and guns

to keep the underclass under them

but

The Revolution will not revolve around you.

It revolves around

the child who cries herself to sleep after a day

of abuse and neglect

while the child lovingly corrected cries

after being removed from home

and the child who hears “justice” but sees “injustice”,

who questions what he sees,

who questions the system,

who questions the questions,

who questions why,

and when and where and what and who

but

The revolution will not revolve around you.

It revolves around

those who’ll fight those whose ideas of profits and losses

don’t buy into what their

children and grandchildren will breath,

drink or eat in the years to come,

who feel that money is

more important than air,

more important that water,

more important than the future,

more important than anything else

including the fact that

The Revolution will not revolve around you.

Instead,

it revolves around those brave enough

to take on the system,

who strive to prove that justice for some

should be justice for all

and help to make that possible;

around those who see a need and try to

honestly and with courage

and passion

and compassion

try to solve it,

around those who see those

whom life has dealt harshly with

and who still struggle to stand up and fight

and who help them with a hand “up” not “out”,

around those who see the hunger

and strive to feed;

who see the abuse

and try to end it;

who see the hurt

and try to heal it;

and then, only then,

if you have the courage

to instigate this revolution,

then and only then will

the revolution involve and revolve around you.



This was written during the mid-1990s and is part of my book Revolutionary Broads and Other Nightmares which is looking for a publishing home.

Salt Creek, St. Petersburg

Salt Creek, St. Petersburg

by Robin Shwedo

©: Robin Shwedo, 2011



Historical, varied, over-looked Salt Creek.

Saltwater waterway,

used for littering, garbage-dumping for too long.

Once pristine, now muck-filled,

wanting to become once-again – vibrant,

Vital

estuary

life-giving

ebb-and-flow

peaceful waterway.

“Watch out for sharks!”

Crabs, fish, pelicans

displaced by cans, ring-tops, litter,

to be (hopefully) replaced (again) by nature.

Wonder if Native Americans used this

as their water-highway?

The wind and currents steer us.



This was written on 2-10-11 for a Nature Writing class at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg, taught by Tom Hallock. It was a fun class, including a kayaking trip on Salt Creek, as well as writing.

When I took the class, a man standing on a bridge above the creek watched us paddling along, and hollared, "Watch out for the sharks!" Got a good laugh from all of us.

How good was the writing? There was even a book (Salt Creak Journal) published with some of the writing and photography, along with a release part.

Professor Hallock's Nature Writing class has moved on to other local waterways to write about.

This poem is part of a growing collection tentatively titled Painted Words.