Innovation Against Violence
“God is strange but not malicious,”
Einstein declared. My husband
reminds me that there are more galaxies
in the universe than there are grains
of sand on earth—10 sextillion
stars, 5 sextillion speckles.
I don’t need shrines or temples.
No prayer wheels or reliquaries.
The wind cumulates. It tumbles
over wheat, wave & summit
but its mysterious engine never stops.
Wind—my deity, my dance partner.
I turn off the news, zero-in
on the scent of honeysuckle
at dawn, the late afternoon
tap of woodpecker. Frog music
as fireflies flare. The day
opens & closes in patterns
& layers like my grandmother’s
lace folding fan. Briefly, I forget
about all this man-made violence.
Reverberations of trauma rest for now,
dormant snakes under soil & snow. No more
man-made violence! No more. No more.
