See Them Now
Too often, the world learns a young Black man’s name,
After grief has called the cameras and the questions came,
Then tragedy becomes his portrait, as though loss and life were the same,
While all the years before the headline disappear behind the frame.
I sat across from seven graduates preparing for their start,
I asked about their families and the futures they would chart,
Their answers carried discipline and service from the heart,
And every answer pulled the crisis-only portrait far apart.
See them now, before the world decides their name,
Stand beside them long before the trouble came,
Give them time enough to recognize their flame,
Real men give real time—then teach them to do the same.
We speak about young people more than asking what they see,
We name the roads they should avoid before we ask what they might be,
But listening gives a young man room to claim his own identity,
And sometimes being heard is where a future first becomes possibility.
Mentorship is not a speech delivered once before a crowd,
Not a photograph of service with a promise spoken loud,
It is keeping every private word a grown man has avowed,
It is showing up again when no applause is heard aloud.
See them now, before the world decides their name,
Stand beside them long before the trouble came,
Give them time enough to recognize their flame,
Real men give real time—then teach them to do the same.
The interviews returned me to the boy I used to be,
To questions I was carrying without the words to make them see,
To guidance I had wanted and the roads I could not yet foresee,
And gratitude for what God gave despite what had been absent from me.
Statistics can reveal the scale; they cannot take a call,
A report cannot attend a young man’s graduation hall,
A chart cannot correct a boy before one choice becomes his fall,
The work belongs to living people willing to be there through it all.
See them now, before the world decides their name,
Stand beside them long before the trouble came,
Give them time enough to recognize their flame,
Real men give real time—then teach them to do the same.
I cannot give my younger self the counsel missed that day,
But I can turn and meet the young men coming up this way,
The absence I once carried can become a debt I pay,
By standing where another boy might need a man to stay.
See them now, before the world decides their name,
Stand beside them long before the trouble came,
Give them time enough to recognize their flame,
Real men give real time—then teach them to do the same.
These seven are not finished when they leave these rooms as men,
The circle only widens when they turn and reach again,
The time once given to them becomes a legacy by then,
And what began with seven can outlive the count of ten.
See them now, before the world decides their name,
Stand beside them long before the trouble came,
Give them time enough to recognize their flame,
Real men give real time—then teach them to do the same.