The sun rose with gentle enthusiasm after several days of cold rain,

Blowing away gray overcast skies with its golden red glow

Awakening the terns, ducks, gulls, warblers, and cormorants

Beckoning watery sheets to rise and join the skies

And there, as is so often the case, in stillness, while

Campers watch television in million-dollar full-service rigs

Safely isolated from the very nature they profess to love

And the madness of reactionary politics fades (albeit briefly)

From the mind, clearing space for memories to surface – 

Memories of childhood sails, the taste of salt, of days

Becalmed and of days pitching in great storms

Sails reefed, hiking from the gunnel, sheets

Burning hands raw to be kissed with sting of health 

By Salty Sea, which, eons ago joined in

Holy matrimony with Stardust to birth the very

Humans who, filled with prejudice and greed,

Threaten the planet’s ability to sustain life.

In the peaceful sands and waving eel-grass

It is hard to remember the wars, executions, pandemics, 

Gun violence – injustices that grieve the heart of divine love;

Each rusty call of a red-wing blackbird and 

Every lap of wave spraying its foam aloft

Is a reminder that Love is the axis of the cosmos

And Babylon will fall to make room for a Bride and her Groom

In the Garden City of Peace

May 2022

LRT