Listen to the Silence

Out quietly walking, deep

in thought, and all sound ceases,

even the music of the wind blowing,

your own breathing in and out,

the footfalls you leave on the gravel path,

-- not a sound, not a noise,

only silence, a stillness;

keep listening, listening for the soft voice

whispering inside you, barely recognized,

the sound of yourself welling up,

asking to be heard, that still small voice

you first heard in the darkness

of the womb, grown silent in leaving,

pushing you into the light, into the noise

and the confusion, the chaos called living,

growing up, childhood into adulthood and old age,

life drowning out that silenced voice left behind,

that same small voice in the darkness calling you now,

to remember, to recall your own beginnings,

your own past, the journeys you were meant to take,

discovering, again, who you are.

It's always the children

who suffer most in war, some adult

squabble over saving face, feeling superior,

accusations made and threats exchanged,

and the children’s lives, their dreams and visions

are sacrificed for someone else’s ancient ideology,

time-worn ideas in need of youthful fantasy and imagination,

in need of the children’s laughter and longings,

not in young lives laid down, taken, or forever changed

by short-thinking old men bent on selfish gain,

forgetting their own childhoods, their own children,

crushing now the innocents’ hopes and dreams,

hopes and dreams full of possibility, dismantled,

their wings clipped by tragedy and fear and death,

wings meant to set them free, fly them upward,

higher and higher, ungrounded, toward the heavens,

setting us all free to see a better world, a better future,

mankind working together for good, for the children

lost in war, working together for Peace. 

Sacrificial

And the blood of sacrifice, flowing

out, is shed to appease the gods,

the greater deity, our guilt absolved,

cleansed and atoned of our sins;

but maybe the gods remain unsatisfied,

the smell of blood, the crackle of burned

flesh an offense, this temporary groveling

soon forgotten; what they want, perhaps,

what they ask of us, is life and purpose,

humanity, again, reflecting them.

Lesson Plan

And so the lesson began,

a brief poem to read, “two roads diverged …”,

questions asked, questions answered,

metaphor and simile, rhyme and meter,

new vocabulary, a new way of seeing,

and a brief essay to write showing meaning,

understanding, new skills acquired;

 

then the announcement came:

“go into lockdown,

this is not a drill!”

 

So we sat huddled in the corner,

away from the door, away from the windows,

the lesson abandoned, the poem, the questions,

the answers, abandoned, too,  a new way

and the essay, unexplained

as we sat, quiet and still, scared

and sobbing, wide-eyed, wondering;

 

this is not the lesson I had planned.