Literal Poem of the Day

February 12

Evolution and Revolution

In winter’s hush where pale light dwells,
A date awakens, tolling bells.
February 12 — a tempered flame,
Where history shifts and signs its name.

A queen once knelt beneath the sky,
Young Jane who learned how thrones can die.
Her silence sealed a kingdom’s thread,
As Tudor roses blushed in red.

Across the seas new soil was claimed,
A Georgian dawn was softly named.
And in the Andes, freedom’s cry
Let Chile’s sovereign banners fly.

Empires bowed, old orders ceased —
In China, dragons were released
From crowns 2000 years in reign;
In Persia, monarchs fell like rain.

Yet not all change was forged in war —
Some rose through justice at the door.
On Lincoln’s 100th birthday morn,
The NAACP was born —
A vow that liberty expand
Beyond the limits law had planned.

And wonder walked the selfsame date:
Two minds that altered human fate.
Lincoln — steady, stern, and kind.
Darwin — mapping humankind.
One freed the body, one the mind;
Together, proof that truth aligns.

In concert halls, the clarinet
Bent blue notes none could quite forget —
Gershwin stitched with daring art
Jazz and symphony at heart.

Chaplin laughed at gears that grind,
Dior reshaped the feminine line,
The Beatles shook Carnegie’s air —
A modern world declared itself there.

Art was stolen, art was raised,
Orange gates in winter blazed.
A scream returned, a park transformed —
Proof that beauty can be reborn.

Red hands lifted for the young,
Union songs in Burma sung,
Love demanded lawful voice
That all may wed by equal choice.

Sometimes the lunar lanterns rise
On this same night in eastern skies —
Oxen years and fireworks bright,
New beginnings dressed in light.

So what is February 12?
A page where epochs interweave —
Where power falls and hope expands,
Where music bends and justice stands.

It is a hinge in winter’s frame,
A quiet day that will not tame.
A proof that even frost-bound ground
Can turn the world without a sound.

No day is empty. None is small.
This one has shown us — change is all.
And if such currents crossed before,
They cross this living day once more.

February 12 — still moving through —
Rewriting what the brave will do.