Multitude

On the way down to New York City for the People's Climate March--a six hour trip--I didn't interact with anyone in particular--my nose in Pinsky's book The Sounds of Poetry.  Families and old friends chatted. I felt alone. Then, as we entered the city (still a long way to go), people went up to the the front of the bus and started to teach us chants and songs.  One went:

We are the change,
We are the rising sun,
We are the ones we've been waiting for,
And we are dawning.

We are the change,
We are the setting sun,
We are the ancestors of tomorrow,
And we remember.

Another with lines like:

Many stones can make an arch,
Singly none...
Many drops can turn a mill, 
Singly none.

 When we got off at 77th Street and Central Park West, the tail of that long serpent about to wreathe itself through the city, we found the wide street packed with people waving banners and ready to go. A group of us walked down the sidewalk, itself jammed with costumed people, to the section we were to be in--environmentalists. The people:, millennials, GenX and boomers, all colors, proclaiming every kind of message that overlapped with concern about climate change, mostly non-political. Babies sat on shoulders or in strollers. A single, 300,000 person voice speaking by their presence in a playful but serious tone: now, it's now.

Suddenly, hands went up, and the roaring noise ceased: a moment of remembrance for those already victim to climate change. Silence, everyone holding in. Then, up the avenue, a roar like a tidal bore, a wave of sound, not-noise-makers but our throats--and we began to move.