Some days it is like a circus
without the swirl of a carousel
as I listen to the news. Other days 
it is a funeral tears spilling onto the ground
wiping away the blood covering city streets.  

I try to understand the hate and inequity
that permeates the pores of the nation. 

It is if they forget the flight of the swallow
migrating south in autumn, 
the bloom of the mayapple in early spring.
Don’t they remember wild horses
walking the sands along the ocean’s edge,
the way a mother cuddles and warms her newborn baby
in the middle of the night. 

When it overwhelms,
turn off the news.

Be the artist spilling paint across the canvas with gentle strokes
to tell the story.
Be the writer blowing words to corners of the earth creating peace
with the language of sacred space.
Dance across the clouds dripping grace like freshwater pearls,
a pirouette waving a wand of lavender.