he had a dream

and i see a school principal raising her babies alone because her family wants
better things, a love separated

for 13 years, and reunited when finally

the money is enough and the legal path is cleared, and six months of together later,

dad is dead of an American heart attack and mom

is working the Wendy’s window and cleaning offices at night and i see the three

boys from El Salvador, that the other kids calls taco, sleeping on chairs in the living room

and raising themselves with a one bedroom roof over their heads and a soccer ball

and no English and no warring and. 

and i see a woman smuggled into the country in a roll of carpet in the back of a truck

to be with her green card holding husband,  a surgeon bagging groceries and
delivering it to online shoppers all day until evening, when he drives uber,

driving drunks home from the Kennedy Center, being called brother

by slow slurring middle aged hipsters who want the music louder and sing

sloppy in the back seat and might vomit at any moment,

one car, one ride at a time toward a better future for his daughter who isn’t allowed

to go outside other than to school and a wife who can't work and ICE breathing down
everyone's necks and.

and i see achievement gaps in top high schools,

statistics mulled over and worried like broken beer bottles

into sea glass by the board of education, and finally

after a year of deliberation

and emergency meetings, steps are taken and these are renamed

opportunity gaps,

and every student receives a new personal computer,

and my students don’t have internet at home and

no one talks about that.

and the children are painstakingly writing out their dreams

with borrowed pencils and borrowed paper and are

chewing gum against hunger and with eyes open

spend a strictly timed 90 minutes writing five paragraphs describing

that with a roof over their heads and no official war, they

will see their dreams of being professional athletes and the
best doctor in history come to pass, after all the sacrifice made

by everyone who is anyone they love dearest, including God,

through prayer and faith and His good grace,

their dreams will come true if they just believe in His power enough, 

because in this worldly place, somehow one thing is sure

they don’t believe in themselves.