Sanctuary

Sanctuary

(“Seek good and not evil, that you may live; and so the Lord, the God of heavenly forces, will be with you just as you have said.” Amos 5:14)

You keep moving the target, you keep changing the rules,
you declare some things illegal and others gifts of gold.
When you based your opinion on third-hand
professional gossip you got lost in the crystalline darkness.
While you laugh I cry that you
have held the truth at arm’s length. And you mock
the prophets who speak showers of rain,
not your disdain for what you cannot understand.

These moments are over like the fading rainbow,
and we do well to remember the colors once the
spectrum has gone from our perception. (Does it
get brighter
the longer we stare?)

So they hijacked 700 without due process,
they commandeered them across the skies
without a clue how many were wrong or right.
And then I hear your voice pronouncing judgment
on them all,
making them guilty, making them criminals,
making them subject to your cartoon caricatures
and two-dimensional portraits. You paint them
all the same.

Sanctuary. We hear the mission bells.
Sanctuary. We hear the widow’s tears.
Sanctuary. We wait the summer sun.
Sanctuary. We wait the promised sage.

Sanctuary, we hear their calls to hear their case,
a place safe enough for their stories to be
safely shared over soup and a bed protected from
the managers of messages who lengthen the shadows.
And we hear the babies gently cooing themselves to sleep.