Kevin Ressler is Executive Director at Meals on Wheels of Lancaster, Pennsylvania and co-founder of the Lancaster Action Now Coalition. He attends Community Mennonite Church of Lancaster.

This poem was written and spoken on August 13 for a vigil in Lancaster’s Penn Square in solidarity with the Charlottesville community following the terrorist marches of white supremacists and the terror attack that occurred when a car ran into protesters. 

“I’ll meet you in the square”
has become too much our common refrain.
And I’m heartbroken, I fear,
to know it won’t be long before saying again:
“I’ll meet you in the square.”

Here we have met, come hand in hand
too many times to keep even count;
to speak aloud in protestation or
in delinquent retribution for our silent past.

But fairness, or at least some success,
is deeply needed in times that deeply need it
and damned be we if we don’t need
some victory now. This hate we see?
The God-honest truth is this: this is us.
We do neither present nor future self favor
by denying it, or hiding it, even if we could forever.
This hate and bald-faced selfishness,
cars thumping over the peaceful,
this. is. us. this. is. we.

This is 400 years
of chattel effing slavery exported once emancipated
…kind of…
We don’t get to blame
some foreign invader or hapless
hopeful refugee. After all, it’s our war addiction
they flee from there to our shores here
taking their opportunities while we
blame them for taking ours
when we never even applied.

Here, with you, is my body.
I’ll meet you in the square.
Count me, my body, my being.
This is the first step in application.
That was our brother behind the wheel
and it’s time we come and get
our own. No more can we hide
behind the hopeful incantations
of our silence. These aren’t monsters,
these are our now-unhooded neighbors
so emboldened by our feckless
silence for fear of our own discomfort:
they now wear robes of polo and khaki.

Are you praying yet? Have your
knees yet known the hope at the end
of the despair that strips raw
the excuses we will always make
until the point that we decide
to see the divine light is inside us
and become something more than privilege
affords each of us to take?

Friends, neighbors, at some point
history turns but always on the
same fulcrum. The point upon the precipice
is the let-it-go. Our self-crafted
image shatters and we are broken
knowing we cannot do this alone.

Whether winter scarfs and coats
or the strings of warm summer eves
or yet under umbrellas of spring
or the clear crisp of Autumn winds,
time and time again, my loves:
I’ll meet you in the square.

In the shadows of our statues to war
all the world over, yes starting here
at (what should be called Peace Plaza)
the foot of the flagpole.
I’ll be with the spirit of humanity.

I’ll stand in front of the tanks of Tiananmen.
I’ll stand with the 33 million in Tahrir.
I’ll stand in velvet in ’89 at Wenceslas.
I’ll return day after year
striking in hunger with you in Azadi.
All the world over,
it comes to this in the end.

I’ll be there because I need to know
that you’ll also still be there
when the time comes that evil fights
to turn back progress for itself.
I’ll be there because you need me
and I know you’ll be there because I need you.
When darkness begins to befall, I need
to hold a light amidst the lights.
I’ll meet you in the square.

When hope does dwindle and my nerve
fails to find a settle to my stomach,
I’ll meet you in the square.

When innocent children are executed by the state.
When the wealthy rattle the saber, chimes
of Wall Street’s bell for war.
I’ll meet you in the square.

When they tell us tales we know to
see through of cheap oil and deathbed jobs.
When they try to poison our water,
I’ll meet you in the square.

When they come to our towns, openly with rifles,
they don’t need a hood for us to know
who they are and have always been.
I’ll meet you in the square.

This is our town and our century
In its center? Oh old friend hatred?
Not here, no more.
We’ll be meeting you in the square.

Until the day we long for,
the day when we can pass
one another in the square nodding
knowing everything now is a’right.
It’ll be, just you and me
meeting for tea or coffee.

Then and then I’ll be glad to say,
I’ll meet you in the square.