wordplayground

The earth already knows too much
About us. We dig holes
And throw ourselves in, 
Weep, set stones
Where no stone would sleep.

The mountains, blue yoke in the distance,
Are coming down - 
Rock, bush, slaughtered tree.

The sea is washing salt from the bodies
Over and over, and without rest.

I tell my daughter, It’s not so bad.
She holds up a bombed city 
In a book. When she looks 
Away, I look away.
I put down
My newspaper, gray gauze of words,
And want to beat this country with a stick
Or pipe, wake it from this madness
That eats anything that doesn’t speak.

But what can I do with these hands?
Push people back, stop a car,
Wave for help on the front lawn?

Shame is picked away from under a thumbnail.
God circles above. The street
Is like any other, and east or west,
Our end is only a stone 
That won’t roll back.

Something must happen. Someone must
Rule who can cry and believe
In the permanent. I worry
About the earth and the absence of Father,
And how we tear our hands
For what’s not ours. The eagle
Gives up its bones. On their hooks
Pigs kick blood in the faces of workers.

And even the sea, flat green
From where I look, is giving up
At the shore - gray whale
That’s cut with initials, or worse.
Children did this. And men.
I face this daily. The newspaper 
Runs its one story, Thursday or Friday.

We love to kill with what
We’ve made from rocks. And so
It would take a God drifting across water
To save what’s left. Or a redemptive
Tree to leap from, one by one, 
Until the world is so quiet
We won’t know this place
Or remember to get up
And begin where we left off.