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POETRY
How to Know Them
And I think we knew this
Note: Below the poem is an audio clip of the author reading the poem.
To learn the tree just view the fruit.
Don’t pay attention to the root,
for branches could be grafted in.
A root of good can nourish sin.
In politics and faith affairs,
the founders aren’t their distant heirs.
They start their work with good intent
but others may reverse their sense.
The key, then, is not what they say,
nor yet the forebears in their day,
but what’s now done, to what effect.
That is what we must inspect.
If Lincoln, Gandhi, or Jesus Christ
could nowadays somehow be enticed
to preach upon a city street
their own thoughts now to all they meet,
their own followers might shoot them.
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Copyright ©2021, Paul H. Harder II
This poem is licensed under a Creative Commons BY-NC-ND 4.0 License.
When I read “How Long Will White Privilege Steal Our Peace”, by Adrienne Samuels Gibbs, I was struck by her reformulation of something Jesus said: “I was always taught to learn the tree by observing the fruit.”
