Tag Archives: Stages of Peace

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Peace Plague

If I can be anything I want to be
today let me be a peace plague.

Let me be a peace plague, airborne,
spread fast in the air
just a breath of wind
two neighbors who are angry stand at a fence
one drops a rake, the other a hose
they stare at each other. “Come to tea,”
says one, and the other comes.
Someone stops writing a letter of complaint
and gathers blankets for the warming center instead.
A policeman aims at a kid with a gun
shouts “Freeze.” and then he freezes too
on an intaken breath, and the kid drops the gun
hands up, breathing my plague.
And in a war zone, one side chokes on the air
and stops firing. The other aims and stops as well.
Both fall to their knees and weep. After time,
some get up and start gathering the wounded. Others
tear sheets into bandages and yet others start moving the rubble
finding the bodies. The bodies must be found and buried
in holy ground before rebuilding. My cousin
opens her mouth to gossip again and inhales and chokes
and stops. She says something other than she had planned.
Peace spreads like a wave, like a plague, and everyone
looks for someone to help.

If I can be anything I want to be
today I want to be a plague of peace.

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Growth

I am with eklastic: the Ragtag Daily Prompt has been an island of peace and friendship and joy over the last year.

The trunk is from the US Botanic Gardens: wisteria, I think. This is an example of complicated growth. Are we closer to peace and helping each other and is ChatGPT aiding world peace and harmony? Hmmm.

A creative use for a fence:

My parents had Lovin’ Spoonful albums. I had glasses by fourth grade and loved this song. I thought it was funny.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: looking back.

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Stockings

The stockings are ready!

This is from last year. I forgot to bring my stocking this year. I will have to use a sock! Well, Santa will surely understand.

My ex says happy chanakwanschristmasfeliznavidad. All one word. And love, joy and peace to you and yours too.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: holiday.

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Delicate

I think of what is delicate in all our wide wild world
Our world itself? Yes, but more. Peace among people? No, peace
is strong as war, peace lifts my heart and roars, hoping others hear.
Most delicate is the human heart, all humans. Covid has damaged
the human hearts, we fear, we grieve, we stress and lash out
and so we go to war and wars and argue with each other.
Human hearts turn outward, we cannot see the virus and feel helpless
as the subtle battle is fought and doctors and nurses and scientists
research and die. Human hearts want an enemy they can see, they can fight
and what is better than another human? Every human is different
so there are many choices, to fight over the differences. Let us stop.
Gather our wounded, clear the rubble, find the dead and bury them.
Let us stop and cry and weep and tear our hair.
Let us mourn as a world our dead and the damage to the human heart.

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For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: delicate.

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Love sorrow

Love sorrow

There are a lot of people that I love

that don’t love me. The family that

believed my sister’s stories, about me,

my father, and her daughter’s father.

My sister died ten years ago.

I wait a decade, trying to repair it,

and now I give up. I do not want to

see them again, any of them, though

I still send them love. They may not

have my presence, after a decade of

cruelty or indifference.

Work, too. I am labeled malingerer

twenty years ago, after influenza.

“I don’t understand how you could be

out for two months from flu. I could understand

a heart attack or cancer, but not flu.”

Do you understand it now? I had

Long Covid before Long Covid existed,

after pneumonias: influenza, strep A

strep A and then Covid. Each time it

takes longer to recover. After the third round

and a year, I know that I have chronic fatigue.

I don’t bother my doctor as I am a doctor

and I know we have no cure. I can work

half time, see half the number that we are

supposed to see daily. I work anyhow.

The money ends almost meet. After a decade,

Covid closes me down. I go to work for The Man,

suspecting I’ll get pneumonia. I walk in rooms

to patients with their masks off. I react

with PTSD each time but take care of them

anyway. It only takes five weeks to get

Covid. I am on oxygen for a year and a half,

chronic fatigue magnified. How did I not get

it in my clinic? I masked everyone with a cough

or cold from 2014 on. My patients were USED

to masks and I masked too.

I am on oxygen and suddenly the doctors

who thought I lied, are pleasant and stop to

talk to me, while I think cynically, you’ve

disbelieved me and spread rumors about me

for 20 years. Do you think I forgive you now?

And one who said he’d be my friend forever

no matter what. And also said that when people

go over his invisible line, he never speaks

to them again. I think, oh, that will be me,

this is a set up. It is. But Beloved, Universe,

Earth, Sun, and Moon

why do I love them all anyway?

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For the Ragtag Daily Prompt stable, because maybe love is the only stable thing in an unstable world.

The bones of the great blue heron are so light, that I think it is standing on the floating kelp beds. I’d wish my bones were that light, but that would be osteoporosis. Maybe I could come back as a heron.

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Hunted

I am having an internal argument.

It’s about shacks on a lake in Ontario. My grandparents and family built the shacks and I’ve been going there since I was under a year old.

However, my sister died of cancer in 2012 and there was a horrific family battle over my niece. My mother had already died. My father died 13 months after my sister and left the same will as my mother. Unfortunately it was written when I was a minor. I cried when I read it because I was the only person named in it who was still alive. I knew what my father wanted, or remembered what he told me. A will is a will though. I took it to an attorney and followed her interpretation.

Then I was sued by family regarding the niece.

I knew what my father wanted but he had not done it. So I decided not to fight it and handed over half the estate. Because even though my father wanted me to watch over his granddaughter, he had not left me the tools. And she did not want me.

So back to the shacks. It’s the side of the family that brought in all the lawsuits. I have not felt welcomed there nor loved since my sister died.

Part of me is furious that I am being hunted out, unwelcomed, wants our grandparents to curse them.

The other part points out that I have already been hunted out, effectively. I stopped trying to take my children there because I couldn’t tell who in the family was “neutral” (basically not talking to me) or “gossiping” — the rumors re me trying to harm my niece were incredibly painful. I had to let her go.

After my father died I dream that I am issued a huge SUV, black. I am to go pick up three children. When I arrive, two are teens: my two. The third is a toddler. My niece is really the same age as my daughter, but not in the dream. In the dream, they tell me, “You can’t take the toddler. You don’t have a car seat.”

I say, “Can I go get one and come back?”

“No.” they say.

I say, “Please, can I borrow one? I didn’t know I needed it! I was issued the SUV!”

“No.” they say. “You can only take the two teens.

So I took the two teens and left, crying.

I woke up and thought: my father’s will is not my fault. I did the best I could. I followed an attorney’s advice and I tried to do what my father wished. I did not have the tools I needed.

Now my children and I may get an offer to buy our share of the land. My children are ready to be bought out.

I do not know if I am. I feel like this is the last connection with that side of my family, not only the living, but the dead. I love the land far more than the silent living and the cruel living. Why are families so cruel and why do they need enemies so badly? Gossip is a sin, truly, and hurts. Selling my share is saying goodbye to my sister, my mother, my father, my grandmother, my grandfather, my two uncles, my aunt. I don’t mind saying goodbye to the cruel living nearly as much as to my dead.

And that too makes me sad.

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The forum gathers

The forum gathers.

Red Paw puts her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands. “Told you so. Been telling you for 11 years.”

The small child/angel is sitting in a chair that morphs from regular boardroom chair to youth chair as she morphs back and forth.

“Nice job with the chair.” says Red Paw.

The two split and now there is a Small Child and an angel, sitting in two chairs.

Red Paw morphs too, into a bright red angel with a black halo and black bat wings.

The White angel nods and a feather drops. The feathers are bright white. Her halo is made of gold glittery pipe cleaners and attached at the shoulders.

Red Paw’s halo floats and seems to pull at the room.

The Quiet Woman sits in the fourth chair, with a cup of tea. “Anyone else?” she asks.

The others shake their heads.

“We are discussing the diaspora. Is it time to let them go?”

“Has been for 11 years.” says Red Paw nastily.

The small child nods.

The White angel says, “They want to believe what they want to believe. Let them go.”

“T, B, S, C, S, D, A, F, N, C, T, L, K, R and then next generation as well?”

All three nod.

The small child says, “They can contact us at any time.”

“They won’t.” says Red Paw.

“People can change,” says the White angel.

“And do they always?” says Red Paw.

“No.” says the White angel.

“I agree,” says the Quiet Woman. “We are done.” She brings a gavel down on the table, which rings like a singing bowl. The other three blur and melt in to her.

“We are done.”

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The photograph was taken 2016 or earlier when Halloween was on a Sunday. I dressed up and so did the minister.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: forum.