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Welcome to Week 79 of Be the Change
As we barrel toward another existential election, I thought I'd take a break from working to stop the fascist threat that Trump represents--by writing letters to voters, donating, voting, etc.--to write poetry and share it. For we need both action and spiritual nourishment, especially in trying times like this. Enjoy!
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"Trump falsely claims $1 billion was ‘stolen’ from FEMA for migrants..." - CNN
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Lately it seems I am doing everything by half.
Half-hearing the morning warble of Robins,
the gunshot-terror of the morning news. Half-
remembering the list of errands and the list of
things to do before I grow old and infirm. Half-
seeing the delightful glint of early-evening light
on my window, the malevolent glare on my ever-
glowing screens. Half-reading, half-scrolling,
half-loving, half-hating.
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Ever halfway between where I am and where I
want to be, too far advanced to start over, too
far away to make it in time, I pause, out of breath,
and look for a place to sit—perhaps in an alcove
by a brook, the sound of my agitated heart and
the blue-white waters hitting me full-on—and
become but a stone weathering away into sand.
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The moon, cold and pockmarked and hard,
is not dainty.
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The moon belches starlight,
has no gender.
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The moon can’t tell missiles apart from
spaceships, dreamers from destroyers.
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The moon does not know of phases:
the moon is always full.
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The moon resists ideology. The moon prefers
NASA to SpaceX, leaves it at that.
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The moon is curious about our goings-on,
but not overly so.
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And the moon is what God is not: needless
of our prayers, able, if not to move
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heaven and Earth, at least the oceans;
and, hanging like a tattered Michelangelo,
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the Moon is more than a figment
of our imagination.
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You may think it inconsequential that an empty
tube of toothpaste is not, if pressed, empty,
but has more to give of itself. You may prefer
odes to lofty ideas, or nature, or love. You may
have studied Shakespeare, Bayesian probability,
Goethe and Shelley, Darwin and Einstein.
Perhaps your idea of perfect relaxation is sipping
tea on a rainy day as film noir plays on the TV
and the pitter-patter of rain tickles your eardrums.
Perhaps, at this moment, you feel too tired, too
cynical, too important, too old or too young
to marvel at such banalities. I have been in
your place and more. Yet this morning the gravity
of this war-torn epoch hit me square in the throat;
and would you believe, my friend, that what saved
me was that very last dollop of toothpaste—rinsing
away the residue of yesterday’s ghastly failures?
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