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.
Way of the Mountain@Rockmirth
September 11, 2001
Judyth Hill is a stand-up poet, author of six published books
of poems, and a teacher of poetry, living, in amazed and grateful
beauty, where the Rockies meet the Plains. In the picture
she is reading from her most recent collection of poems, "Black
Hollyhock, First Light", La Alameda Press.
You
can find out more about the book at Amazon.com.
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