August 26, 2019

Shine, Kendra Ford

Violence is what happens when we don’t know what to do with our suffering.  Parker Palmer

The train glides down the coastline -- 

the grasses in the mudflat shine in the August sun,

the egrets shine in the grass,

the water shines, lapping at its high tide line.

The world is so beautiful

it is hard to really believe 

that my own species keeps killing each other,

small nuggets of metal and explosive

propelled from a vicious tube of metal.

Because we keep catching this horrible disease

of thinking that some part of us is bad or just not part of us.

There are these fragments of dark video

you can just make out the shooter,

see the gun before he starts shooting.

And then stories of the people who can still think when they hear gunfire,

they helped others escape

and set up blockades, some who grabbed the shooter.

Can you imagine grabbing the shooter, the gun hot from the repeated firings?

The surprising part might be the human weight of the person doing this,

his breath, coming hard as you struggle.

We say it’s evil but that keeps it so far away.

This is a human thing,

this terrible loneliness that turns into rage,

this madness that we could heal ourselves by harming each other.

 

Some people figure out what to do with the suffering,

Gandhi and MLK, didn’t the light come out of them?

And my first grade teacher, too, voice husky with cigarettes

Who got us all lit up for whales and life

The man who cleaned the church in San Francisco, 

always asking how I was, even though he had lost half his family,

the little girl, her father in prison, who clapped when I bought her lunch,

who asked a hundred questions, so curious and delighted.   

It’s the shine that’s everything.

You might call it God

Which would be fine

But I’ve never a word

That could contain the shine,

That didn’t box it in, turn it into something

To put in your pocket to keep your hands warm, feel safe.

 

Between the shootings, we try to figure out what to do. 

More and more I think we have lie down in the streets,

Lie down in the malls and schools and the Walmarts and the garlic festivals

Lie down along the border, and refuse to move until this madness ends.

Lie down with our arms around the people we suspect might not be good enough,

However that has wormed into your own mind.  

There is no shame, it’s a virus loose in the world, of course you got it.

We all did.  

Lie down together and refuse to get up, maybe that’s the inoculation.

The train goes into the woods, the world gets darker

But the leaves in the summer afternoon, there is no other word for it, shine.