A frozen creek: static in the barren woods.

In warmer, former days she babbled, churned, and even roared.

Now, she is deathly silent,

and the woods respond in like sullen slumber.

‘Tis not her fault she has succumbed,

for frigid air has assailed her for too long.

Her natural state is fluid and free, whimsy,

at times listless, but often impassioned and boisterous.

But, a northern, vicious wind has besieged and conquered her.

A nation too, like the creek, should be free, boisterous, and moving,

but frightful gales of division, maelstroms of uniformed–misinformed–hatred,

and blizzards of malicious ignorance have snatched the life from the nation.

The weather is untamable, but we are the vicious flurries,

we have halted our hallowed creek.

The longer the water is assailed, the more likely the ice is to crack–

but a nation is not a creek.

A cracked creek, when thawed, returns to her liquid course,

but a fractured nations is scarred, at least, and irreparable at worse.

For when our nation-creek is shattered, pieces are hurled to the nether,

never to return to the waterbed.

We are either the ruin or renewal.

It is within our purview to either fuel the cyclone of hate,

or thaw with radiant love.

Silence does not radiate love, but allows the tyrannical temperatures to plummet.

Inaction and silence are an apathy which is active.

One degree alone makes not the difference,

but as hate is infectious, love too is contagious.

Hate is a cancer that consumes and freezes;

love is a light which warms and dispels darkeness.

Thaw the creek on which we all depend,

or the barren trees’ silence will be an eternal testament

to the nation that froze and shattered

by her apathy, ignorance, and hate.