The Sea Doesn’t Always Part
You looked out the window
At the flares and the blockades,
At cars burning and at words you can’t read yet,
Painted in shades of hate.
You asked why but I was silent,
Like when you asked why
Lincoln died of cancer, or to tell you the
Homeless man’s fate.
How can I explain this world to you
When I’m still a little girl,
Barefoot and blameless, and
Dreaming of becoming a nurse?
Because you’re five,
And I don’t want to tell you that
The devil’s need for blood and heaven’s love
Make a beautiful curse.
One death becomes every death,
And under the eyes of a wounded nation
Rage finds swift justice in
Shattered windowpanes,
Injured fingers rewrite history
In the dust of shattered idols, and
Boyhood’s valiant slingshots are by
Soldier’s hands profaned.
One washes hands in Pilate’s basin,
One kneels and washes feet,
One holds signs, one draws lines,
One licks the boots of brawlers,
But when blame is divided
Only hatred remains, and the
Fatal fruits of Eden and Eris burn
On feuding altars.
Leaders and lords look
From their games and arise
To set the table for fate, pouring
Mixed wine for Destiny’s god,
Careless of the shade of the fuel
They coldly fan the flames,
Because a people so divided
Need no other rod.
When flames are ash
The lion’s corpse lies named and
Draped in change, brilliant hues
Fading into a colorless sea,
Eye for eye left us blind, and
The drug of power enslaves again,
The neck once crushed itself becomes
The bruising knee.
The lion waits unseen, in steeples
And badges and the poor man’s street,
As we pardon killers and
Crucify saviors,
Childhood’s tears stain the starlight,
Aging and broken futures stolen
To sustain the ghosts of fathers
And silent mothers.
The world is both fragile and callous
And your heart will hold scars,
And the only language we know
Is art and the sword,
But scars mean healing,
And acts of love starve evil,
Freedom falls to rise again by
Kinder hands restored.
Play Lincoln’s favorite song and
Remember, my son –
Bend your knee to no man,
No matter his symbol or victim’s disguise,
May your little brother’s hand
Always find in yours a home,
And may you always see the shade of a
Man’s soul in his eyes.
