for all food banks everywhere.

Les moved lightly up the steps,
     Turned the handle and stepped inside.
Four wretched months had passed
     Since his boss had called him in.

The crushing words had seared his soul
    Like a poisoned arrow -
Without a job, how would he
    Feed Mary and the kids
Pay the mortgage and fire the furnace?

So many unanswered calls,
     Applications filed for phantom posts
Struggles to cover tons of need
     With far too few unemployment bucks.

The woman at the desk smiled.
     “Hi Les. Give us a sec
To make up your box.    
     We have fruit and eggs today.”

Les, fought off the lump in his throat,
     “Thanks, but no need, Sarah;
Got a new job and brought you this.”

Sarah took the check from his hand,
     Ken promised more would follow
     And left by the door he had entered -
A reborn heir of Hope and Dignity

“I see no difference between war and ordinary ******” Albert Einstein

From the moon our planet looks unified
Quite dapper in its veil of blue
Pirouetting gracefully about the sun.

Lost in a dream, I see myself as a child –
Innocent in my lawn chair
On the Sea of Tranquility - telescope in hand.

The screen door pounds against its frame
And Father hands me a lemonade
And sinks into the chair beside me.
This is the day HE must tell me.

I start to say how peaceful and kind it all is.
And that I want to go there someday.

Father stops and me, takes a deep breath and begins:
Two thousand years ago I sent
My firstborn there to clean up a terrible mess.

Proud men slashed their neighbors
And stole their goods,
Neither children nor women were spared the sword.
In the end, they hung him on a cross."

I said, “you must be mistaken;
All I can see from here is serenity.
This can’t be: they are all your children.”

Father continued, “It is worse now:
Even prouder and crueler men and women too
Use my name to justify their barbarism.
Children are even killed in schools.
They have made bombs strong enough
To destroy an entire city -
All over boundaries that I neither drew nor intended.”

My head sinks into my hands
And I began to sob uncontrollably.

As I dream on, my wails carry all the way
down to earth where all the children weep with me
LOUDER AND LOUDER AND LOUDER!!

Their mothers run to their sides.
Their fathers smash their AK - 47s
And H bombs against the rocks –
Vowing to relinquish fratricide forever!

I awake with a jolt only to find myself
Back in the nightmare
That the proud refuse to banish.

Imagine if you will, the earth, our earth
     As a gigantic Savings and Loan
With vaults to be filled and loans to float
    
    And debts to be paid - or else!
All we require to breathe or feed 
    
     Is stored within its spherical shell.

Like it or not, we stash all our accounts
     At the solitary bank of all that is

And queue before the window daily
     To withdraw our daily sustenance.

But the drawers are not as full as before -
    
     Less water, less oil, less breathable air;
How we will keep our bros (or ourselves)
     When the shelves have little to offer?



Hurricanes howl and wildfires crackle
     Just outside our windows.
      
Do we flee, must we fight,
      
     Do we lose all, or perish?

What will we do when the Bank of Gaiea
     Shutters its doors forever?

“The freest person is the one with the most hope –“
Gabriel Marcel

Of all the shards of a broken world
That chafe our wounded psyches,
None cut deeper than the
jagged edges that would
exchange our essence for function.

Are we nothing but the pieces we craft,
the spreadsheets we tally?
Are we only the hours we clock?

When we raise our hands to the light
do our fragile bones
appear pale and translucent?

We wander like nomads without a tribe,
banished to a strange and distant land -
exiled from our once inquisitorial selves.

Do you see that distant light?
It calls us to elevate
the blinds of our forgotten dreams.

Its haze obscures the blazenness.
Which brightens with each forward step.
Go ahead, approach if you dare.

Behind that veil stands “Redemption”
who waits patiently for us in the
form of an oracle who coolly whispers,

“Welcome back, my name is Hope.”

“I hope in you for us." Gabriel Marcel

When we share hope our bond is real
     And when our voices chant a blended song,
Our ties are strong as tempered steel.

In anxious times with fears surreal,
     We seek out friends among the throng.
When we share hope our bond is real.

But when our wills compel us feel
     Spirit-bound to search, however long,
Our ties are strong as tempered steel.

Without a sign, the fates reveal
     A newfound friend who’s come along.
When we share hope our bond is real.

With zest our common course we seal
     Hope-called by duty’s civic song.
Our ties are strong as tempered steel.

With reason's light to fire our zeal,
     We rise to challenge fortune’s wrong.
When we share hope our bond is real.
     Our ties are strong as tempered steel.

"I hope in you for us." Gabriel Marcel

When we share hope our bond is real
     And when our voices chant a blended song,
Our ties are strong as tempered steel.

In anxious times with fears surreal,
     We seek out friends among the throng.
Without shared hope no bond is real.

But when our wills compel us feel
     Spirit-bound to search, however long
For ties as strong as tempered steel,

Without a sign, the fates reveal
     A newfound friend who's come along
To share our hope; our bond is real!

With zest our common course we seal
     Hope-called by duty’s civic song
Our ties are strong as tempered steel,

With reason's light to fire our zeal,
     We rise to challenge fortune’s wrong.
When we share hope our bond is real;
     Our ties are strong as tempered steel.

A poem not yet written
Is like a genie incarcerated in its bottle,
Waiting for the gentle strokes
Of its poet’s liberating quill.

An image here, an alliteration there
Send emergent clouds of verbal magic
Floating into the aether,
Demanding to be crafted into
A tapestry of finest weave and hue.

It will be what it must
And not even the hope-filled poet
Can foretell its destiny.

But like all expectant parents,
Quaking in the throes of labor,
The poet hopes his or her newborn child
Will leave the world
An incrementally better place.