Inspired by Camille Claudel’s sculpture “The Wave”
Almost like a fist
the great wave of war
rises now, arching,
all froth and force,
and in the single instant
before the crash,
before our demise is cast
in onyx or bronze,
before everything
we’ve made is smashed
like plaster on the floor,
this chance to conceive
the world as it could be,
the chance to take
each other’s hands
and hold them fast
so the terrible wave
can’t separate us.
The wave will break.
We will be towed and tossed.
My friends, it matters
that we stay together.
to see this sculpture, visit here
Posts Tagged ‘war’
The Single Instant
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged camille claudel, connection, ekphrasis, moment, war, water, wave on March 5, 2026| 6 Comments »
After
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ache, bomb, geese, killing, war on March 2, 2026| 6 Comments »
On this day after
my country bombed
a girls’ school
across the world,
part of me does not
wish to meet the day.
But just after dawn,
I wake to the relentless
honking, honking
of geese returning
from far away
to make a home again
in our yard.
I want to rewrite
yesterday so every girl
who went to school
also came home
to her family,
so every mother and father
woke this morning knowing
their child was safe in their bed.
I am so filled with horror—
we killed them—
I don’t know how to rise.
But the great noise
of the geese returning,
that harsh and strangled sound,
pulls me into the world
to meet whatever the day brings.
A goose wanders past my window,
regal with her long black throat,
proof that life goes on.
Even when we can’t imagine how.
Even then.
Illogic
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged growth, logic, peace, war on February 28, 2026| 19 Comments »
deploying bombs
to achieve lasting peace—
like planting barbed wire
and expecting to grow
a rose bush
What Comes Next
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged goodness, Palestine, peace, story, war on August 5, 2025| 13 Comments »
There’s a place in my brain where hate won’t grow.
—Naomi Shihab Nye, “Jerusalem”
The man in Palestine runs
toward airdropped parcels,
is shot in the back of his head.
The military says such a shot
was never fired. The dead man
does not argue back. His body
is carried away with medicine,
dried beans, sacks of flour.
How many more must weep?
This world. This world with its
guns and fear and righteousness.
Whether or not we hold the gun,
we all have a finger on a trigger.
What else can we do with our hands?
I want to believe in a goodness
that persists despite cruelty—
not a fairytale story with a wand
or a genie, but a real story in which
a real woman grows peaches and gives
them away for the joy of giving.
A story in which a man helps another
man build a home with a bed, an oven,
a roof. War comes so quickly.
Peace comes so slow. I want to believe
there is in all of us a place
where hate won’t grow.
I want to feed that place in myself.
I want to listen to that place in you.
I want us to live into another possible world,
discover what else our lives can do.
The Same Day the Military Leader Said, “We Will Respond with Force”
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged peace, war, woods on June 25, 2025| 3 Comments »
There was a moment in sun-dappled woods
when I felt held by the peace that blooms
in the lungs, then spreads to limbs, to mind,
the peace that comes when I turn toward
the throbbing ache of hate and war
and don’t pretend pain isn’t here
and don’t deny beauty, either.
Amidst the peace of the quiet woods,
I wanted more, more peace
that spreads from woods to breath.
More peace, as if peace could be shared
like cake or bread or shelter or song.
I wanted to share it everywhere,
more peace that makes the mind a glade
with gentle light and ample shade.
How could I not want peace to spread
to war-torn homes in war-torn lands,
to war-torn hearts and war-torn hands.
So deep the peace of the sun-dappled woods.
And still I wish for more.
One Great Danger
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged danger, indifference, war on May 9, 2025| 7 Comments »
bullets, bombs, blades
but what does the most damage—
indifference
Thinking about Change
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged change, kite, possibility, Puerto Rico, war on November 12, 2024| 7 Comments »
remembering a visit to El Morro in Old San Juan
Above the vast green field
at least a hundred colorful kites
dive and soar, weave and swirl
as hundreds of families
gather with blankets and picnics—
and what would they think,
all those soldiers and troops
who for hundreds of years
fought and defended and
readied this place for battle,
would they dream it possible
the sounds they’d hear here now,
not artillery fire, not cannons,
not hoarse and desperate commands,
but for this Sunday afternoon
horn-happy music, wind-giddy whooping,
bright laughter of children rolling in grass,
and in the air no smoke, no shelling, no screams,
only the rustle and fluttery hum of kites
as they swoop and dance in the breeze.
On Memorial Day
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged fighting, goodness, memorial day, peace, war on May 26, 2024| 7 Comments »
after watching Porcelain War
I think of every human
who has given their life
to fight not for war
but for peace. I think
of every mother and father
and son and daughter,
every baker and painter
and teacher and builder
who has learned to use
a weapon to save
the people and places
they love. I think of love—
how the Ukrainian woman
said tonight she had
never been more aware
of how good humans can be—
and how she’s learned this
midst bombs and blood
and broken trust and shattered
glass. I think of how peace
is a choice we make with
every smallest action we take.
I think of the pen in my own hand.
What will I do with it?
Self-Compassion
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged parts of self, peace, self, self-compassion, war on May 19, 2024| 16 Comments »
On a day when I am at war with myself,
when I battle my own humanness
in a longing to be good, to be better
than good, to be perfect,
when I point to myself with a snarl
and a sneer as if I am my own enemy,
then I notice how my whole body contracts
and I’m a crumpled up map, a gray lump in the throat,
a stone in the gut, a crumpled wing in the chest.
And it’s hard to breathe. And it’s hard to move.
That is when I’m grateful to have a body,
grateful for the way it helps me remember
I have a choice to meet this moment with kindness.
It’s as if, mid-combat, I’m delivered a postcard
with a forever stamp sent from my wisest self saying,
Dear woman who thinks she is not good enough,
I see you. It’s okay to feel this way.
And what looked like a battlefield a blink ago
now looks more like a vast green meadow filled
with low golden light where all parts of me
are welcome—the one who makes mistakes,
the one who judges, the one who longs to be good,
the one who thinks she shouldn’t have to learn
the same lesson again. There is no part of me then
that is not welcome, that cannot be loved,
and my body expands like a great alpine basin,
unfurls like an unending white flag.
How easy it is then to stand with all of my selves
in that field and know what it means to be home.
Instead of Turning Off the News
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged letting it all in, news, note to self, pain, trees, war on April 29, 2024| 14 Comments »
Because it hurts to think about
the lost look in the boy’s eyes
as he holds out a thin silver pot for food,
because I ache when I think about the rubble
made of kitchen tables and bicycles,
hospitals, homes, high schools, hope,
because it is so painful to not know how
to help hundreds of thousands
of mothers and uncles and brothers
and daughters, I think about trees.
I think about how they grow.
How they need wind and the stress
of the world to build reaction wood
that helps them to lengthen
and strengthen into the bend.
Without such wood, the tree would break,
would fall. Oh self who would try to lock out the news,
oh self who feels the great weight of other’s pain,
of course you would want to look instead
for only what is beautiful, what is kind.
But let it all in. The fear. The worry. The anger.
The wishing. The compassion.
The longing to help. Of course
the big problems make you feel small.
But unless you can stand
in the place of yes to the world,
you can’t really stand at all.
The hunters in Eurasia would harvest
the compression wood created by stress
to make their bow staves—
that wood was stronger, more dense.
Oh self, you too need the right tools
to do the heart work you long to do.
What are you made of?
How strong are your roots?
Who will you be if you do not let it all in?