Wage peace with your breath.
Breathe in firemen and rubble,
breathe out whole buildings and flocks of red wing blackbirds.
Breathe in terrorists
and breathe out sleeping children and freshly mown fields.
Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.
Breathe in the fallen and breathe out lifelong friendships intact.
Wage peace with your listening: hearing sirens, pray loud.
Remember your tools: flower seeds, clothes pins, clean rivers.
Make soup.
Play music, memorize the words for thank you in three languages.
Learn to knit, and make a hat.
Think of chaos as dancing raspberries,
imagine grief
as the outbreath of beauty
or the gesture of fish.
Swim for the other side.
Wage peace.
Never has the world seemed so fresh and precious:
Have a cup of tea and rejoice.
Act as if armistice has already arrived.
Celebrate today.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Breathe
wage peace - judyth hill - september 12, 2001
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2 comments:
This poem is strangely hopeful and simultaneously depressing. It reminds me how far behind we are in building a better world.
I really do like the sentiment to "wage peace," however.
Hello-
I could find where to email you - I just posted this poem on my blog. let me know if that's not okay -
it's really beautiful. thanks for sharing!
love, Emily
http://wideopenspaces.squarespace.com/
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