What This Means Poem by Leonard McGee

Our destiny does not excite a dogmatic response
Instead it cleanses the palate with profound nuance
With flavored metaphors, seasoned with historic fact
Creating cuisine for the mind that keeps us looking back

For to see what is to come one must understand
What came before, gave us what’s at hand
Because under this sun there lies nothing new
Except the motivation to dig until your self finds you
Teaching us that we have dreams to live up to
Letting us know the journey is not thru

Because on those slave ships they were dreaming of us
In those cotton fields they were dreaming of us
On those battlefields they were dreaming of us
On the back of those busses they were dreaming of us
In those boycotts, marches, jail cells, hospital beds,
and swinging from those trees they were dreaming of us

Now that there voices are heard through us
Because they answered to no one to will to us
The prosperity that their lungs never got breathed
The opportunity that their minds never got to conceived
Blind in faith, holding on to hope
crying the rivers apon which we float
They exhaled the winds beneath our wings
long before we gave a name to what this means