April 3: "Sight," Kwame Dawes, Time to Change

Sight

by:  Kwame Dawes

               for Rwanda

Every ax should have an eye
to see the havoc
that it wreaks.

These days our tools are made
in factories.  Machetes
blind as stone arrive
stacked high in trucks.

They do no see
the soft eyes
of a child.

Every ax must have an eye
to see the havoc
that it wreaks.

____________________

No, this is not a happy poem.  It's a necessary poem.  You see, for the last several weeks in America, the news has been full of young people, marching in the streets, protesting gun violence and guns, demanding change in our country.  It was exhilarating to see and hear.  The clear voices of the young teaching the old and out-of-date.

Now, news makers have moved on to other topics and stories.  It seems as though this time will be forgotten.  Again.  Until the next school shooting.  Then we'll be reminded of what the youth said, what they begged for.

The world has a short memory.  Things like school shootings and genocide and brutality and rape and racial violence have the shelf life of a carton of milk.  They go sour and are tossed aside, until there's another classroom filled with dead students, another country where citizens are macheted in the streets, another woman bruised and bleeding, another person of color carrying a cell phone takes a bullet in a backyard.

It's time to change.

Saint Marty just wanted to remind you.