In my childhood on my grandparent’s farm, it was the rooster’s crow at dawn, which encapsulated the nature of God’s creation in the serenity of a loving family. This was God’s intention before giving Adam the task of working and caring for it. The Earth has evolved now to an invasion by Russia, beforehand by an insurrection in this country.  January 6^th, 2021, I was awakened by the sound of a train off in the distance and my dog Raven as she barked, my new morning rooster. The dawn erupted with the blast of a whistle. Its encroachment, giving warning to its tonnage by the roar of its engines, racing louder until it passes, leaving in its echo the clanging of rail cars, wheels churning upon the railways of the times. The sound and my reading of history jelled, slithering my mind into the reverberation of sledgehammers, pounding in unison, chiming to the words of Lightning- Long John (An old song by a chain gang). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G5KtQynWvc    Listening to the beat on YouTube carried me back to the 70s. The birth of Rap in New York. The 80s. The days of my kid’s high school years where school administrators refused to let blacks Rap in the school talent shows, claiming it was not music. Suppressing our cries by inserting divisive tactics, repressing believers to their only haven, the shield of the Church. Others to the streets in procurement by any means, reparations for atonement. All in a nation whose growth was upon the free acquisition of labor, the physical muscle of a people, grinding out history, building the networks of a nation that would become the most highly productive, leading to the most powerful economy in the world. All the while through demagoguery, the subjugation of minds, the embodiment of who we were as people. The powers to be, marching in cadence with non-judicious prudence, with laws that produced snuffing. From Jim Crow to segregation, until Doctor King’s “I Had A Dream” speech. A threat to the status quo, as his demise was a means to an end. In 2016 it became “Make America Great Again.” A college degree is not needed to connect the dots.  Pessimism is not in my vocabulary, and Rome wasn’t built in a day, but our nation is drawing closer to an impasse. The seeds I share point first to the book, the word of God, the unity of souls.  Through the armory of knowledge, as a pesticide, we in unity can become Joshua and the walls in “A Colony in a Nation” will crumble. “When there is no enemy within the enemy outside cannot hurt you.”