War
Here is an offering
of the poor and weak
for an ounce of power, please.
We will attack you
if you don’t make peace,
if you don’t
yield up your bodies,
soft and bruised,
arms as thin
as olive twigs.
We will drop our
big, beautiful bombs. We’ve
already dropped
such beautiful bombs,
they sail the air,
precision doves.
They detonate
peace
peace
peace.
It rings in your ears
in the aid line.
It rings in your ears
in Tehran.
It will leave you with nothing
except this
peace.
It transcends
all understanding.
The geraniums bloomed in the shadows of the solstice moon
as the bombs fell
The caladiums grew wild along the old decrepit fence row
as the bombs fell
The bergamot released its sweet minty scent in the summer heat
as the bombs fell
The hollyhocks climbed up the sides of the tilting barn
as the bombs fell
The magnolia blossoms fell like opaque tears
as the bombs fell
The weeping willow reached to embrace the earth
as the bombs fell.
She could not grasp the dichotomy of
what has happening.
They surely, willingly flattened
it’s not just flesh and bone–
there are greater forces at work
you may choose to be oblvious
to the Larger World–it remains indifferent–
but it is there, nonetheless
you may wish the universe
operated in some other fashion,
but Nature does what she does
and there is not one thing you
can do about it
you are not in control
of much at all–
the little you do control
are those things
beyond what
the eye can see–
the things of which
poets and pastors
speak
yet many, like volunteer zombies,
ignore the capacity
of their soul,
trading it–willingly–for
a nine-to-five,
a cell phone, the
approval of others
I grip the wooden handles,
And look out across the team,
In the early frosty morning,
As I watch the rising steam.
I know before the work is done,
My jacket will be replaced,
By a warming sense of accomplishment,
And sweat upon my face.
How many miles will I walk,
In the furrow, six by twelve?
Turning over patient soil,
Inch by inch I delve.
I hear the scraping of the landside,
And gliding of the soil,
I hear the squeak of leather,
And the feel of honest toil.
I know in this new tilled earth,
My daily bread I win,
As I swing around at the fields far edge,
And head them back again.
The team and I connected,
By leather, wood and chain,
Perform this ancient rite of man,
And it’s more than food we gain.
There’s a deep sense of pleasure,
In the feeling of the work,
And a contract between myself and land,
From which I cannot shirk.
I’ve fed the soil, all winter long,
Which now will feed me,
I slice it deep with the coulter knife,
And open it for seed.
I find I’m caught in a cycle of life,
Myself and the land I tend,
I’ve no notion of when it started,
And I cannot see an end.
