Legacy Anthems

Say Brey-Leigh. Let the Providence night
come back in music, faces, moving light.
A camera lifts. Beyond the city glow,
a tent, the stars, the constellations she would know.

A yoga mat unrolls. A breath comes through.
The world has room for something you might do.
She heard a voice its owner kept concealed
and helped him trust what singing might reveal.

The voice is his. Yet when the song begins,
her confidence is somewhere folded in.
He draws a breath. The 1st note leaves his chest.
What she encouraged travels with the rest.

Say Iryna. Let the colors have their names.
Let green be green before it stands for pain.
From Kyiv into Charlotte, follow art,
the brush, the animals that held her heart.

A camera gathers light; a brush lays blue
where someone saw a sky and brought it through.
2 ways of looking ask us to look longer.
The person in the picture grows less distant.

The melody returns in Ukrainian.
Ірино — her name reaches us again.
The promise crosses languages to stay
with someone English could not reach that way.

Keep the lens, the brush, the voice in view.
There was a life before what happened, too.
No final headline holds the whole of it.
The song leaves something words can gather with.

Now Charlie’s voice comes through a campus crowd.
The questions rise; conviction answers loud.
His Christian faith is woven through his speech.
The song recalls the young he hoped to reach.

A chorus gives him Heaven as a home,
then leaves us with the future still unknown.
Beneath the title, other words remain:
a husband, father, friend. We hear his name.

The song brings Erika’s appeal to light.
Ephesians asks what love requires of life:
as Christ gave of himself, the verse calls husbands
to love beyond the words with which they promise.

The public voice has carried through the square.
The verse turns toward the person waiting there.
When all the cheering ends and people leave,
someone still needs what someone else can give.

Some days we let the whole recording play.
Some days 1 word is more than we can take.
A finger finds the pause. The room goes still.
The song can wait for us. The song will keep.

A camera. A brush. A voice made brave.
The songs hold what their makers tried to save.
Beyond their frames, beyond the last refrain,
the lives have more than any song contains.

The music ends. A listener stays behind,
still wondering about a single line.

What were they like?

This time, you do not reach for play.