Memorize the Faces

Memorize the Faces

(“’For I know the plans I have for you,’ says the Lord, ‘plans for well-being and not for trouble, to give you a future and a hope.’” Jeremiah 29:11)

Start. Why do you scale the walls of anger when
peace is within reach? Aim.
Cancel every subscription to insanity and seek
the places where
sunlight reaches every crevice, every imagined slight.
Why do you accept invitations to trouble
when
there are bridges the connect us all?
Place.
Did you make reservations for the patch of land
you so patriotically protect? Who was there
before you,
and after, who will own it then?
Send.
Write it down. Memorize the faces that cry
out,
(what a crime)
for mothers moments before dying.

Every bottle in the cupboard has been mislabeled,
the horizon is blocked by the mountains you’ve built.
Show.

Look around at Babylon, (do you disdain its idols?)
and send a letter home about the friends you’ve found.

Last, learn to love and
First.