Wednesday’s Poem: Is this the End?
I’ll warn you up front this is not a happy poem. I have been paying close attention to the atrocity unfolding on our Southern border. I have written about it, meditated on it, asked for guidance, asked what is mine to do in this awful circumstance that is the most extreme action yet taken by a lawless president and administration. I have come to no easy answers. I have found no comfort. I ended my recent meditation with a simple prayer, the only one that is coming to me now: “Lord have mercy; Christ have mercy!”
Is this the End?
The whimper of a child stolen from her parents
May signal the beginning of the end
Of the grand experiment of democracy
Begun on this continent a turn of Pluto ago.
It has always been a fragile undertaking
Built on a shaky foundation by ridding
The land of a native “vermin” infestation
And using the labor of stolen slaves.
Years of wars: civil, world, conflicts of containment,
All justified in the name of god, another name for greed;
Cruelty, torture civilian casualties – “collateral damage”
Cascading out of control; shame.
Is this the end? A pathetic one it is:
Children used as pawns by a tyrant king
To achieve his infantile ways, his means to an end.
Our means to our end? Christ have mercy!
©2018 Richard W. Bredeson. All rights reserved.