We live in surreal times. Some among us believe that speaking truth – truth about injustice, about subjugation, about 250 years of real stumbles and missteps toward the grand ideals of our free land – is divisive. They even suggest that blind allegiance must win the day.

But why doesn’t truth bring us together? What if we can find truth, and unity, in music? Or art? Or even… poetry?

April is National Poetry Month, so Mary Elizabeth Himes is the right person to hear from. Himes is Poet Laureate of Clinton’s Whidbey Institute, where the mission is to nurture the conditions for transformational learning. Himes proposes a metaphor.

What if we all live in a giant box, she says. And what if the box is walled off into rooms, and everyone in our room looks just like us. We can’t see the other rooms, but the wallbuilders tell us the people there are just like us. Nothing to see on the other side, they assure us.

But we break the walls anyway, we learn the truth, we shine a light on that truth, and it’s… chaos.

The metaphor sounds familiar, a lot like the chaos we feel in today’s America. So Himes goes deeper.

“Who benefited from the walls? Now that we’ve broken them, who benefits from the chaos? Who benefits from this idea that truth is divisive?”

It was the very definition of divisive to put those walls up to separate us in the first place. Breaking down walls, chaotic as it may be, gives us a chance at unity, and justice.

Himes hears the truth. And she hears the backlash.

She sees people resist facts that stare them straight in the eye. “Essentially they’re saying, ‘This is uncomfortable. I don’t want to hear it. In fact I don’t want to hear it so badly because I can’t sleep at night.’ So they get rid of the messenger. And that’s their idea of making it great again.”

We’re born into the system, Himes says, and soon enough we find out which silo we’re in, which walled-off room of the box, which row we’re supposed to line up in.

“It’s my job as a writer to challenge people. To make them think about that thing that’s keeping them awake all night.”

Himes came of age in Los Angeles, on a historic cusp of American social change. Racial and gender discrimination were finally illegal, but they didn’t die with the stroke of a president’s pen. As an ‘80s teenager, she still faced the double legacies of Jim Crow and blatant sexism.

“I was a bully of bullies,” she says. “I didn’t like seeing people get picked on, and I had a violent streak. So, I got in a little trouble.”

It’s tougher to fight the subtle cuts. The snooty misogynistic attitudes. The snickering disrespect from male athletes. The fearful, handbag-clutching body language from white passengers on the bus.

Still, women and minorities in those days had newfound awareness and agency to stand up for themselves. Himes played street football with the boys, and high school sports with the girls. All with a chip on her shoulder.

“I was never told not to be a leader. I was always told to stand up for myself. I expected to be self-determined. Nobody has the right to put you down or step on you, whether it’s about gender or race or anything else.”

In sports, “I was pretty good. I had energy, skill, great hops.” Then a dislocated knee ended her basketball dreams. But she’d already learned the value of resilience, the refusal to accept boundaries.

That resilience helped lead Himes to writing. Specifically, writing poetry. It makes sense, since she had fallen hard for books when she was still in kindergarten.

“The library let me check out ten books at a time, but I could only carry five. So I’d take the first five home, then I’d walk all the way back to get the rest.”

All that reading fueled an imagination that had her writing stories at an early age, and she came to “embrace that I’m not like other people. I don’t mind calling out fakeness, saying, ‘Wait, that’s not you.’ So when I write, when I feel this angst about the world, I just spit it out.”

As a college student in the ‘80s, Himes joined the California National Guard and logged a stint at Fort Lewis for officer training. She burned the beauty of the Northwest into her memory, and promised herself she would live here one day.

It took a while. Himes and her husband, Craig, finally moved to Whidbey eight years ago. She immediately discovered people who shared their art and poetry, their joys and fears, their sunshine and darkness, in ways that could make a difference.

“My peace is in the Northwest,” she says. She was struggling mentally when she arrived, but “Whidbey is calming. There’s no noise here. I can actually hear the trees breathing. It’s life-giving.” Her connection to nature here, Himes explains, gives her a clearer sense of her true self.

Who is that true self? She’s still angry at injustice when she sees it. She’s not afraid to speak truth in her writing. Her words can still pack a wallop. But Whidbey has given her fresh perspective.

Himes is grateful that Whidbey Institute gives her poetry a chance to unify people. “We’re working toward that goal of transformational learning, and I get to be a part of that. I don’t write out of anger, or to make others angry. I try to inspire people to think. To find solace, to be reassured that they’re not alone in the world.”

Himes does public readings of her poetry for the Institute, along with creative contributions and collaboration with their programs. She works to engage the community, as with a recent workshop for seniors and teens to get together and write poetry. About the honor of being Poet Laureate, Himes says “It’s a part of my journey of becoming my full self. It’s who I am. I can impact my community in ways I don’t always understand.”

Whidbey Institute’s Executive Director, Rose Woods, eloquently describes Himes’ contribution to our island. The role of Poet Laureate, she says, brings “a profound layer of artistic expression, weaving together themes of community, nature, and introspection through the evocative power of poetry.”

Woods says Himes’ poetry addresses “the complexities of the island’s landscapes and the diverse experiences of its people, celebrates the serene beauty of nature, and confronts the pressing social justice issues that shape our collective existence.”

As our meeting ends, Himes shares some family history. A great-great-grandfather, Reverend Taylor Nightingale, founded the Memphis Free Speech newspaper in 1881. He was arrested and forced to flee the city over the paper’s fiery stances on segregation and lynching. The Free Speech offices were ransacked and destroyed.

Himes grins like she’s found the source of her inspiration. “I carry Reverend Nightingale’s legacy of activism. It’s in my genes.”

Ode to an Angel – Avancer/ Advance and See

By Mary Elizabeth Himes

Stand tall upon the edges of this piece of earth.

Open up and Advance the boundaries of love in your heart.

Move forward in faith of all mankind

Stand upon the precipice of life and release your mind.

Come forward … advance and see.

As I spread my wings to all of thee.

In preparation to a joyful rising …

an angel of love has been created.

As the sun rises and sets upon us

She will shelter our wildest dreams

In this , our harbor of life and prosperity.

Move forward and take flight

Use her wings in the morning light.

Advance and see

Move forward with me

Avancer en amor y creatividad

Move forward in love and light like we never have.

Together we will protect this harbor and its guiding light.

Advance and see move forward with me.

William Walker’s monthly “Take a Breath” column seeks paths to unity on Whidbey Island in polarized times. Walker lives near Oak Harbor and is an amateur author of four unpublished novels, hundreds of poems, and a stage play. He blogs occasionally at www.playininthedirt.com.