I took something like 50 photos with my phone of so many moments that struck me as I watched the inauguration this morning. But as a writer, I am awestruck by this young woman, Amanda Gorman, and her poem “The Hill We Climb.” It put me in mind of another inauguration, Clinton’s first, when Maya Angelou read “On the Pulse of Morning.” I feel like a brilliant torch has been passed, and Ms. Angelou would approve.
We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace. In the norms and notions of what just is isn’t always justice. And yet, the dawn is ours before we knew it. Somehow we do it. Somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed a nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished. We, the successors of a country and a time where a skinny Black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president only to find herself reciting for one.
We did not feel prepared to be the heirs of such a terrifying hour, but within it, we found the power to author a new chapter, to offer hope and laughter to ourselves so while once we asked, how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe? Now we assert, how could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?
I encourage you to find a video or the poem on line and listen to or read it in its entirety.
ETA: Here’s a great inverview with Ms. Gorman and Anderson Cooper.