PEOPLE

A poem by Philo Okonya

There are some people whom the world says
you have got to respect.
They have been there forever,
fighting and working quietly!

Thinking at a level that most people do not.
They mean well.
But they are never where screams are.
They mean well.
They are too busy to get involved in the shouts of a woman from her house.
They mean well.

They are too respectable to cross with the law.
They mean very well.
They are not activists.
They are well- behaved.

They move in another planet and space.
They mean well.
Their depth is too much.
They are fine in the cave still with Plato and Truth.
They mean well. They are as holy as some sacrament.
"Leave that nonsense,"
they often say.
They mean well.

But before you know that they are this way,
you have run up to them with a burning issue.
They have meant well in their silence.
You have got burnt in their presence.
They meant well and not your death.
You got stoned to death.
They meant well.

If you survived it now you know,
they are not there for nothing other
than that they are here.
Not that you might be here or there.
They mean well, all the time.

They are the constant time of a continent.
They are never rising or falling temperature of a nation.
Under ground also they will be meaning well.
If the noise is too much, they will come out and smile.
You wish they were ice cold or deadly fiery.
Christ spits out the ones in the middle.

They mean so well!

Such people were also in the great crowd that stood there
to see Socrates die… to see the Christ crucified.
They meant well.
They trembled when the curtain split into two.
They did not want to hear the wind that followed!

Be well, when you find yourself alone.
A woman can!
He is dynamic,
He remembers it all in totally different words,
"Whatsoever you do, to the least of my sisters,
that you do unto me."