gather blossoms under fire

This poem is honestly just the whole mood of National Poetry Month.

    for Mel

While love is unfashionable
let us live
unfashionably.
Seeing the world
a complex ball
in small hands;
love our blackest garment.
Let us be poor
in all but truth, and courage
handed down
by the old
spirits.
Let us be intimate with
ancestral ghosts
and music
of the undead.

While love is dangerous
let us walk bareheaded
beside the Great River.
Let us gather blossoms
under fire.

—Alice Walker, "While Love Is Unfashionable" from Revolutionary Petunias and Other Poems, 1973, although I will fess up to reading it on the wonderful poetryisnotaluxury Instagram. They have a book coming out in May!