Spring threatens to melt into us.
Summer follows soon enough.
Birds will return, seeking seeds and worms,
Building nests for the young to come.
Will the birds remember the songs they sing?
Songs of summer, songs to mate?
Flowers will emerge, warming their petals
And leaves under a brilliant sun.
Will they remember how to open
Their blossoms?
Will they remember how to dress themselves
In glorious color?
How can the birds or flowers remember
When the world walks a tightrope
Over the abyss
And sunflowers may never grow again
Tall enough to bow their heavy heads to God?
Peace, an elusive thing you are,
I have known you in fleeting moments
At best---
Would that I could see the whitest of doves,
Feel the lightest, glancing touch of feathers,
Hold the olive branch for a moment—
Yet, how can I partake of such a luxury when—
When children’s bellies bloat in hunger
When those of one religion kill those of another
When those of one skin hate and kill those of another
When men rape, beat, kill women
When children and women are bought and sold
When humanity seeks dominance over all the earth
At the cost of future generations?
Yes, I want to see the white dove with the olive branch fly—
To know the world is at peace
To know my daughter lives in that peace
To know all the children of world will grow knowing only good
Then death could take my hand
And I would willingly go
In peace.
With ramshackle shards
Of heart, soul, self
Falling away like the browned petals
Of a long-wilted bouquet,
We create a riotous noise
In ramshackle attempts
To find some connection.
Lumbering, awkward attempts
At reaching out to touch once again,
To replace, to freshen
The brown wilted and missing parts
With new bouquets of spring
Whose stems sit in eternally
Fresh, clean waters.
We dream of a life lived
No longer ramshackle,
With no long-wilted bouquets
Of a past to haunt with falling petals,
But a life returning whole,
To move without noise
Through the world once again.
Marshal forces
Of the earth, moon, orbits of planets,
Laws of time,
All we hold mighty and true,
Stop everything in its tracks,
Turn it all back
Before the start of any of it,
Falling away,
Marshaled from memory.
We thwart not the sun or the moon,
the movement of planets,
the coming of rains or drought.
We neither thwart
our birth nor death.
We try to thwart what our hearts feel
And the desires with which it plagues us,
But our hearts feel and desire still.
Even our tears cannot be thwarted--
though they may not fall,
the tears fall unseen.
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