Legacy by Alliance

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Are you woke? Are you waking?

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this, for everything, we are out of tune.

            William Wordsworth

 

In the after-rain perfect morning

one puddle in the driveway

is clear as glass over the stones

 

where the dog’s foot sinks deep,

toes splayed, and when he drinks

the surface ripples hard

 

catching the brilliance of summer sun

though we are standing in shadow

on ground dappled with gold

 

so pure that a tumble of brambles among the trees

turns to spirit, every line shining

emitting white light, like God, like life

 

in a universe of green, quickening

sycamores and tulip trees in full leaf

reaching, resting – gestating the seed

 

Cicadas unnumbered

Their voices are calling

Like shamans’ , their rattles

invite me to dream

 

but Jays shout alarum

Invader! Invader!

The wings flash in warning

to drive me away

 

I smile at their anger

and walk to my breakfast

my windows thrown open

my morning of peace

 

Acknowledge – acknowledge

the war and the dying

Acknowledge the struggle

lest you are destroyed

 

This green hill is not gentle

Even birds have their battles:

siblings fight at my feeders

where a hawk hunts the jays

 

Insidious honeysuckle,

And wily wineberry

convince us with sweetness

to let them run free

 

Barberry storms and swarms us

thorns wicked, roots like anchors

It strips the soil to acid

and starves the native seeds

 

and in that weakened bedding

the stealthy stink tree clusters

advance without remorse, then

declare they’re heaven-sent

 

Biology exhorts us

to hate a foreign species,

eradicate invasives:

restore a balance lost

 

while humans filled with hatred

insist that homo sapiens

comprise more than one species

and twist truth till it bleeds

 

The house wren slaughters larvae

A car mows down protesters

I’m told, to say “lives matter”

is partisan and wrong

 

And what to tell the children?

The legacy we leave them

is bigotry and bullies

and flowers on a grave

 

My morning is the same one:

perfection wound with poison,

compassion for the killer

the hardest crop to reap

 

The world stares in my window

expectant and demanding

This world is too much with me

We teeter on a cliff

 

Today I asked for dreaming

and, eager, reached for visions

I cannot now be silent

This nightmare is the gift

 

There’s war on this green hillside

like war in this, our country

like smoke in a dark bedroom

that kills you while you sleep