When the Signboards

 

When the Signboards

(“Jonathan thought as much of David as he did of himself, so he asked David to promise once more that he would be a loyal friend.” 1 Samuel 20:17)

When the signboards are empty with letters
scattered on the ground
I wonder
how many words
we have forgotten.

If I mailed you my heart as a postcard,
a simple white bit of cardboard,
would you question my sanity or intentions?
Sadly it is me
whose nerves are shot.

I do not want to waste your time,
still I look for days when the sun shines
on the picnic tables by the riverbank
and dream of long conversations (you
remember: the teenage angst, unbroken faith,
the questions that came with age).

Will you help me turn the pages again
without asking why I am no better
than the last time we talked?

Besides, I have seen words and dates
inscribed on granite where George Washington
surveyed the rivers and valleys of Pennsylvania.

When signboards spread big lies with
their letters
I wonder
how may promises
we have forgotten.

Plan a Picnic

Plan a Picnic

(“Wisdom is better than weapons of war, yet one wrongdoer can undo much good.” Ecclesiastes 9:18)

Why does it seem so strange to ask a world at war
to hold their weapons for a little while;
put them on pause,
plan a picnic
and consider the stain water of
the streams under our feet?

We pray for soldiers before they
burst the bowels of humans and cities,
we
pray
for
them.

Peace is wisdom, and the making of it is like God;
war is enigma, chasing wind and meaningless.
How many stones have been owned by one empire
or the next.
How many princes cry because they fear
there will be nothing to conquer once their fathers are done?

My nation’s brains are the same structure as your nation’s brains,
same in blood and same in plasma. Same in bone and same in marrow.

We cannot crow “right to life”
when we send our innocents to fight
to make sure other innocents die.

Following the Prince of Peace, the ointment scatters
the unwise plans of tanks and planes
and refuses to call “spineless”
the very few
who fight with a martyr’s might
to see Peace On Earth as surely as the night
it was first announced.

Once called dreamers,
often named naïve,
the ships that ripped into enemy shores
we envision as first-class refugee transport.

We’ve drawn the lines, we erected the walls,
we’ve demonized and ghettoized
Israel and Palestine,
Northern and Southern,
Protestant and Catholic,
Christian and Jew

Until there is nothing left of the original design
that bears the artwork of love’s dearest innovation.
We dam the rivers
and damn our enemies,
block the seaports
and jail the seekers
and wonder why
“one nation under god”
just doesn’t seem to ring true.