c.2003 M. Bennett Hooper

“We hold these truths to be self evident”, all men are not created equal even when creatively endowed.
Decency , the most maligned of human traits is not the sole providence of the downtrodden in an era where victimization is waved as if it was the recruitment banner for the new shock generation.

One has to but question the silence of decent White men whose silence in the current worldwide storms is deafening except for retired semi-deaf firemen.
Firefighters harbor hatreds like many in our world but it is abandoned when lives are in peril and the hidden decency of the most virulent among them surfaces.
Is my observation.

Must we start fires to ignite White male decency or will decent White men surface and reclaim what for too many is their hidden humanity?
This poem is for Wayne a decent retired Connecticut fireman for whom whiteness is not a crutch but an incidental position of birth.
And he does not hide nor is he ashamed of being perceived as a decent human being.