Poetry is a powerful weapon against the ignorance that clouds our world, even on the sunniest days.

Yesterday, I read Marilyn Nelson’s poem, Sequence, for the first time. It contains two lines that erased a tiny spot of ignorance from my brain, a spot I’ll never miss and, for its absence, I’ll be forever grateful.

Here are the two lines:

For him, I gave away my father’s name.
He gave away his mother’s love for me.

That sounds like such an unfair trade, a father’s name for a mother’s love. But then, life often seems unfair when viewed through judgment’s lenses.