Sense of Decency

By DENNIS HARROD

At a trailhead leading to a path through woods and fields

flush with late summer’s abundance of gold and green,

where the wind rustled leaves and shook a few loose,

and a scent of fall hinted at what was to come, someone 

had scrawled a message of despair meant to harm any who read it,

or perhaps it was meant to please those filled with equal hate or fear

of people whose color or sex or beliefs were different.

—

And despair spread in stomach-turning waves, especially 

in all of those targeted by the message, who had come to spend

time in the woods, and in the fields, hoping to freely breathe the forest air.

A woman lately arrived in the community came to the trail  

with sunny ideas of a long slow walk and found herself instead a target

and turned away, nature’s open offering turned to cruelty that was 

anything but indifferent.

Dennis Harrod is a co-founder of Sense of Decency. On a nature trail in Central New York last year, he (and others) saw that someone had scrawled racist graffiti on the sign at the trailhead.