Take this?
Take this fear
From me this
nausea, these
icy fingertips
Take this worry
of glaciers melting
swollen belly children
staring do-nothingers
rising tides and lowered
expectations
Take this disgust
from me at lies
bold-faced, insidious
divisive, insulting
Take this insecurity
from me as offspring
grown- withdraw and
bare teeth and in
difference incomprehensible
Take this soul-chilled
storehouse of historical
horror –
bodies floating
from falling buildings
children torn in
school houses
prayful people
slaughtered shoppers,
party goers,
sleepers in their beds
drivers in their cars
walkers in the streets
toddlers drowned at
shoreline – migrants
housed in cages –
children ripped from
mothers – on and on
barbed wire and
crematorium smoke
waft from past into
pollution's noxious present
slavery, butchery, forests decimated,
a lone child’s cry growing faint under rock
on and on and on - we all know
Take the spittle of hatred, the vicious glint of eyes
the indifference of one another, the righteous
unrighteousness, the replacement of facts, with opinion
the instability, the cracks widening, the smashed sanctuaries
Take the knowing that I am more old than young
and growing older still on the known path to the unknown
working at the glorious, inglorious oxymoron of
trying to find peace of mind …
Take …..
NO.
Return each and every -
Take nothing.
Leave all mentioned
and all implied
For in the convergence
is the essence of caring
and I shall not cede
I shall not ever cede
to care
