Thunder rumbles like distant gun fire,

The echoes of endless battle.

The statues all have swords,

Huzzahs not to sacrifices, but to campaigns for glory forgotten.

Let the metal rust and the stone melt.

Remember the faces and tears,

Not the cries, nor the gloating words of conflict.

Let love be as fierce as war.

Dry rivers mark deserts, hunger descends to hollow eyes;

Cries of pain 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.

A broken heart sighs behind a smiling face.

What splinters of your dreams are mine?

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

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

Hate is easy, blame easier still;

And easier yet it is to let the past poison.

Pray the rains come and dissolve the walls

And tears soften to forgiveness.

Pray that soft words balm the wound that festers still.

Pray the sunlight cracks the hardness.

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,

And to end a thousand years of drought.