Harriet Tubman

As I read my children a book
about Harriet Tubman,
we stop to swallow the horrors
of slavery and I wonder again
how anyone could breathe
with the weight of all that grief,
and then my son says
maybe that’s why
she kept going back
to rescue more slaves,
because the immense courage
required of her was the only thing
that drowned out
the pain.