This is not a poem.
This is Rachel weeping, wailing for her children,
grinding her teeth, biting her tongue.
Some are calling for reconciliation,
some for healing,
others for moving on,
but when the damage done
is to property but more than property,
to bodies but more than bodies,
when the wounds we wear
(but hide
until we can’t any longer)
are more than skin deep,
when what has been
lacerated is that
nameless essence
we call soul,
imago Dei,
le point vierge,
that placeless place within
each and all of us
where goodness and beauty
and truth embrace
and are at home,
what is called for
is not healing, not yet.
When we so casually desecrate the earth,
when we so cavalierly wipe out the wild life who
before we turned greed to need were kin,
when we kill those who kill to show that killing is wrong
before we turned violence into a sacrament,
when truth and integrity were forced into early retirement
before hoax and prevarication and fake news
were not just given clemency but Presidential medals,

when information is missed and dissed,
when insecurity marries power and
ignorance weds arrogance and give birth
to prejudice, bigotry, racism, and hate,
when life becomes so cheap,
as if it were so easy to come by,
so easy to take, so easy to repair,
so easy to fit in a pine box or gilded casket,
what is needed in these terrible times,
in this liminal space where
threshold holds catastrophe, anguish, and tears
what is needed is an awakened conscience,
remorse (not buyer’s, but liar’s)
mourning noon and night
a stab of contrition,
what is needed is lamentation
a fist-shaking psalmic grief-howl

crying out from our depths
for what we do
for what we do to one another
for what we do to those deemed The Bottoms,
for what we do to the earth
for what we do to feathered, furred, fluked, and finned
who used to be neighbor, kinfolk,
and for what we fail to do
but need to do
or we will be
undone
for good
forever
for ill.

~ djm