It Is Up To Us - Judith Stone

[Larry Robinson]

It Is Up To Us

I can feel violence coming toward me
The Tsunami that Ruth Ozeki said 
Brought Japan closer to us,
And maybe North Korea and Niger.
Can you hear the continuing wars: 
The hurricanes of guns, in Syria and 
At Concerts, Night Clubs, schools, movies, 
Political rallies and even churches?
The old bombs still breaking over
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the memories
Of Manzanar and Heart Mountain, the
Trail of Tears, the avalanche at Orlando,
Of bloodshed that keeps coming?

I can feel the aftermath of that cruel approach,   
Can’t you? A firestorm of torches, 
And hooded men disguised with crosses,
in white ritual robes, and unrhymed chants.
It has already come for black youth in Hoodies,
And brown and white youth, and babies at school. 
It has endangered species and oceans, is choking
Local streams, setting fires, sending floods, 
Earthquakes, even Jesus, Buddha, Mohammed and 
Elijah can’t stop! All the Prophets with insomnia
Are wide awake now. And God, in her weakness, 
Has not slept since before the Holocaust, and still
Turns over agitated, again, and strangled, 
Again, in clouds of insidious invisible
And tasteless gas. A toxic cancer cocktail! 
If you live that long! The Seraphim 
are coughing and gagging, weeping 
for all the Gods, seeing
from their watchtowers in the heavens:  
It is surely and destructively coming.
Asthma, autism, anti-Semitism and Alzheimer’s,
Palestinian, Arab and English mouths, foam rabid
With death, towards us, and towards our children. 
Unless we stop it. Unless we stop it
With compassion for every living thing.
And even for the slowly accumulating rocks!
It will keep advancing. It will keep on coming.

	- Judith Stone