Peace and Pieces

Peace and Pieces

We’ve got our men suited up

Guns a blazed

Finger on the button

And we think on the pulse.

But what happened to kindness?

What happened to understanding?

Why must God be placed on his judgment throne

When He simply wants to dine with us?

We wrap ourselves in the flag

We gaze at its fifty stars.

And yet the infinite ones above us

Burn in all our eyes.

Why do we not wrap our arms

Around those who are angry?

Why do we not gaze up at the wonder

even with those we call friends?

We’re so busy making places,

Faces, traces

of remnants that will be lost in a short while.

How can we reach across the seas

When we can’t reach up,

Or out,

Or around our own collapsed shoulders?

We fight in the name of peace

But not for ourselves within,

And that landscape is familiar terrain.

Yet for years unchanged, unmoved.

Dry as the desert on which those boots pound.

Yes, I can move mountains

But won’t move an inch

In the name of being right.

The hope turns to hopelessness.

Where does it end? 

When did it start?

In the beginning…

Comfort myself, then the one next to me,

Then the one at arm’s reach,

Not as big a distance as it once seemed

And soon maybe the stars and stripes

Will have meaning again.

At least for me.

Tina Turley – January, 2011