| PEACEMAKING IN OUR BELOVED COMMUNITY: POEMS FOR OUR TIMES Peacemaking, briefly, is the art of bringing everyone back into the circle, held with the same resources, love and support (for a fuller description, see https://skyness.net/peace/ ). It’s something many of us do as part of our daily lives, and this column is a way to raise our awareness of that, to recognize the many ways we contribute to peace in the world. These poems were shared on Facebook, words that speak to our shared experience during this time. Photo by Shakura Cathryn Swann. Dear Stranger, 1. There was never not a bridge from your chest to mine. My heartbeat was always the sound of your feet walking towards me. I can’t believe how many years I lived without knowing the air you were breathing out, was the air I was breathing in. Forgive me for not saying ‘thank you’ before our lungs had reason to hide. 2. Fear is what you make it and I’ve been trying to make it my teacher. When the lesson starts to break me I remember the dogs in the shelters– how even those we call ‘the mean ones’ will follow their fear to each other’s sides in the middle of the night, make pillows of each other’s chests when they think no home is coming. Almost everyone in the world is softer than they look. 3. Do you pray now more than you used to? I pray all of the time. I pray to The Big Bang and to The Tiny Bang and to The Bangs we’ll all have to cut ourselves so we can see what beauty can only be seen from 6 feet away. 4. Last night, a poet whose writing I love said he hasn’t written a single poem since the beginning of the quarantine. He said every time he’s inclined to he calls someone he loves instead. 5. The first thing I learned from this virus was to question everything wanting to go viral. The second thing I learned was to dream only giant dreams. 6. A giraffe’s neck is 6 feet long. A decade from now will I remember the week I spent wondering if I could hug a giraffe’s torso and not get sick if the giraffe coughed? I don’t want to forget anything about this. Especially not how it feels to worry about everyone I love at the same time. So much of the world had been doing that already. 7. If every heart-worthy novelist weeps for days before killing a beloved character off, how many centuries must god have spent sobbing before pressing a pen to the page of this year? 8. I used to be a gardener in New Orleans. Every evening I’d spend almost an hour cleaning the earth out of my nails. She held on so tight. I loved her more for it. Later I moved to the desert and was sitting beside a cactus in my living room when I heard a hurricane named Katrina was about to hit my former home. ‘Save the flowers’, I said out loud, watching a storm cloud rage its hungry spiral across the television screen. ‘Save the flowers’, I said, having no idea we wouldn’t save the people. 9. When the water left the city I went back, drove through the 9th Ward to a church that had been gutted by the storm. The preacher had spray-painted his phone number across the length of the falling building. There was something about his phone number being as tall as the door––I couldn’t stop crying. The world falls apart and people become foundation. ~Andrea Gibson |
