Thunder rumbles like distant gun fire,

 A broken heart sighs behind a smiling face.

An old woman’s shaky letters cry for life and love,

Words full of times and weariness, rest that has not come.

Birds dance in the rain, shaking off dust.

A teenage girl whispers a word in a crowded hallway

And fills another mind with kaleidoscopic dreams,

Secrets fulfilled; soft flesh.

Dry rivers mark deserts, hunger descends to hollow eyes;

A chorus of cries can not penetrate the smiling evil of power.

Dry bones nestled in soft sand for others to find,

The poetry of need crushed by the metal wall of self.

Pray the rains come and dissolve the walls.

Pray the sunlight cracks the hardness.

Pray that soft words balm the wound that festers still,

Pray that silence stirs to sound, that stasis turns to motion.

Pray we step from the porch hands held, voices raised

Love aroused to wake the gray day.