And Still She Persisted (for Elizabeth Warren)

They offered her a muzzle
and still she persisted.
This sister, this gatekeeper,
this whistleblower
and thistle-bearer.
They told her to shut
her justice-loving mouth
but still she persisted:
could not remain still
when speaking was necessary.
She would not stop yielding
pistol-shots from an epistle.
Would not yield.
She, Elizabeth Warren,
is just one person, but inside her
stir the voices of the many.
They told her to step down
from the podium and stop
injecting eloquent conviction
into a rhetorical proceeding.
She did not step down, but had to be
escorted by a pair of dense minions.
Hence the meme “And Still She Persisted.”
And she persists yet, plugging along
like a gadfly in heels (not a pig
with lipstick), carrying the fire
of the meek in her nerves and the music
of resistance on her tongue.
There she goes and goes and goes.
And there we all are: right behind her.

— Connolly Ryan