Protest Song

At ten, or maybe twelve, sometime around then,

we discovered that the world was not coming to an end

as perhaps we expected, despite the cold war with Russia

with one finger on “the button” to annihilate us many times over,

even as our own finger was on “the button” on this side,

many times over, annihilation by mushroom cloud;

and despite the “drills” to protect ourselves from “the bomb,”

little human balls crouched and tucked under our desks,

or body to body in rows and columns in the hallways, our hands

clasped over our little heads, or maybe a bomb shelter in the backyard,

whatever good it would do; and despite the hot war brought

into our living rooms, black and white images of destruction and death,

weapons rattling and bombs raining down, and bodies, our bodies,

carried on stretchers to waiting choppers, despite the growing

list of casualties, POWs, MIAs, grieving families, young men awaiting

the draft, their number to come up, looking for deferments, a way out,

making plans to go to Canada, anywhere, remembering friends

returned in flag draped caskets or missing limbs, more than limbs,

these living dead bearing the scars and nightmares of time spent

in Southeast Asia’s hell, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, young people

returning with their demons, awaiting retribution, salvation,

and the peace that comes with death, penance paid; and despite

the revolution, the demonstrations against “the man,” the war,

injustice, our civil rights taken, individual freedoms withheld, beaten

and jailed, singing our protests songs, still sung, still blowing in the wind,

the flowers still gone; “oh say, can you see,” when we couldn’t see, can’t see,

not clearly, even now, wondering still if the promises of peace and community,

harmony and understanding, one humanity, are ever going to be fulfilled,

equality, justice, freedom, democracy; and today, grown older,

not too old to forget being ten or twelve, every age since, and still

not seeing an end nor even a new beginning, a new world coming,

a new voice, a new morning, clear and sweet and free, coming in peace:

where have all the flowers gone? long time passing? long time ago?

Gone, now, perhaps the way of childhood, innocence taken, innocence lost;

and still the question, when will we ever learn? When will we ever learn!