Sometimes it is hard to know how to forge
     ahead.

The news has never been good, but recently it seems increasingly bad.

The grass is still green here, mom.

But it's drowning in rivers of red there.
Dead and brown and gone in other words and
other worlds that are even
still
part of this
     one.

What are any of us to do?

How can any of us bear not to bear witness?
And in bearing witness,
How does any of us retain the strength to live as though all is normal when it is so painfully obvious that it is not
so painfully obvious
that this cannot possibly be considered normal
or that if it is considered normal
then it is so painfully obvious that it should not be
that we should not want to be part of a world where this is normal.

So I return again to the question of how
is any of us supposed to forge ahead in a world at war?

Sometimes I take comfort in the idea that this, too, is the human condition.
We are a communal species, but a species that has always been at war with itself.

Nation against nation, tribe against tribe, clan against clan.

The only difference now is the scale.
We have globalized and commercialized war in a way that people 200 years ago would have found incomprehensible.
We have COD-- excuse me,
COMMODIFIED is what I meant
it into video games and movies and bumper stickers of AK-47s and how
how I ask is any of us to press on in a world so on fire that cities are burning and children are lucky if we can pull them from rubble and somehow hope that they, too, will not later seek to wage the destruction they were born into and borne out of.

And yet still,
The grass is green here, mom.

I barely know how we can love this world.
I hope that maybe we can still manage to love inside this broken plane. The myth of a phoenix is a beautiful one. Born of the ashes made from fire in a world that cannot cease
fire.

Always we hope for rebirth.

Somehow we must find a way to love
something or someone or some place.

In a world where the grass is still green..
And hopefully,
maybe,
can be green in otherwheres, too.

Grass does not grow if it is not watered.

And yet
we have poured a monsoon of kerosene on the plains of dead grass in a drought amidst famine.

Recall--god gave Noah the rainbow sign, said no more water, the fire next time!

What recourse do we have other than to love?

Love that which has burned
Love that which is not burned yet and which we hope to protect.

Love one another and hope against hope that this time,
Maybe this time

The grass will grow green there, too.

I toss my coin into the wishing well,
Watch it while it flutters down, away
Out of sight but not mind.

I sit beside the wishing well,
Wishing well on those who could use it most--
Wishing well on those still lingering near to my heart.

I watch as my wish wanders high,
Even while the coin sinks low.

Where wish and coin will land is anyone's guess,
Which I suppose must be the point of a wish, yes?

The hope of promises which you seek but are not promised,
The dream of the coin and the wish alike
Landing softly on the ears of a friend,
Bringing you both, thus,
Home again.

"Wish well,"
Echoes then.

Which well, I wonder,
Is best suited for wishing well?
Here, there, or anywhere...

Well--

Anyway,
I suppose it matters not--
It's the thought of a wish that does the work.
        And does it well.

Is there anything more beautiful
Than the tree in fall--
With whom I am enamored, enthralled, even--
Clinging with ev'ry sap of fiber in her being
To iridescent color and majesty?

Like the ageless beauty at the party
In her ballroom gown
As all stare in awe and wonder
Before the night comes down
          And the leaves drop
          And then she, too, falls--

          Naked.

What a grey, cloudy day
          It is.
Somber reflections of evanescent tidepools
          Flit by my mind’s eye.
“Be water”—
          Bruce Lee never saw a tsunami, it seems.
And in time ashy skies give way,
          And part their ethereal barriers such
          that Light might shine.
This ceaseless cycle of ourobouros
          Consumes each day.
And still I wander,
          Lonely as a cloud,
Betwixt the Earth and Sky.
          Forever beholden

Between

                      Here

   And


                                                There..

The friends I make on my daily commute
Are not friends, really.
I don't know them.

But I could, couldn't I?
The mom with a nose ring and cool sunglasses,
Who absentmindedly scratches her cheek,
Flashing her wedding ring,
Blinding with the sun's glare
Rings familiar.

She could be my neighbor
Or my coworker
Or my sister's best friend's older sister.
I wouldn't know.

The man in the van
That reads AJ & Sons
Who also checks his phone at a red light--
He could be my plumber,
Or my next random drinking partner at a bar.

I don't know them.
But I could.
We cross hundreds of paths every day,
Thousands, tens of thousands in a year.

We are not alone.
We are strangers and not-strangers
Hurtling through space and time all the time.

Racing for money, notoriety, happiness,
Racing simultaneously towards and away from death.

We are one and the same
We are none and neither.

Are we?

There's a special kind of love
In the shared communion of common experience--
In the joy of knowing that this person, too
Gets it.

"It" being the unholy,
The divine,
The understanding of the fleeting moment.

There's a special kind of love
in sending that article you thought they'd find interesting,
or that song lyric you heard in the subway that reminded you of them.

There's love in the familiar
In the vestigial memories that haunt us
On the outskirts of our daily lives.

You were here, too.
You breathe this air, too.
You know me, too.

In Zulu, one greets another with
"Sawubona."
"I see you."

And the response--
"Ngikhona."
"I am here."

Recognition ignites existence.
I see you.
You are here.

A stranger asked me about my political beliefs--
only, I misheard her,
thought she'd said political beefs.

So I thought I'd serve them to her
to digest
or chew on
at her leisure.

And thus I outlined the stakes--
sorry, I mean--
I set down the steaks:

Beef number one,
served well done,
tough:
the Right claims to uphold the sanctity of life,
but won't spend any money to care for it.
How leathery!
How tasteless!

Beef number two,
mid-well:
served the way they leave kids
grey and hardly pink,
starving.
Meanwhile, they turn away the drowning,
and while tears fill children's eyes,
They advocate war.

What insanity!
What sanctity?

Beef number three,
medium:
served pink and with some juice,
like bodies putrefying,
but they don't care because they're
lying,
stupefying their base--
all the while children dying--
do different colors not belong to the same human race?

Beef number four,
served medium-rare:
tenderly, but not totally rawly,
they take Pride
in blacking out the colors of the rainbow,
suffocating black lives,
subverting their skin,
bruising it
Black and Blue.
Cries of "I can't breathe" choked short,
because
Blue lives matter?

Beef number five,
rare--
served juicy and bleeding,
heart still
beating:

America claims she is the land of opportunity--
claims all men are born in equal trees

Sorry--
claims equality--
I misheard Her.

Because all I see,
are inequal trees:
crooked branches,
stunted growth.

So much depends
Upon
who cares for them?
What soil they root in?
What color leaves they bear...


Who cares?

Sorry,
I mean...

Who dares?