Vox Populi
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Michael Simms: What Holds Us Together Keeps Us Apart
Dragon’s Blood I dream of a forest in heaven thick stands of American Ash American Chestnut American Elm Saint Helena Olive and of course The Great Sequoia And on a nearby island Dragon’s Blood Trees oozing red resin cinnabar which tinted the violins of Stradivarius The Fabric The loss of each species diminishes us tears at the fabric and the news is too much with us The bees in their hives are dying the manatee sliced by a motor blade bleeding in the shallow cove where her kind have lived since we were human the forests of Amazonia are burning We are burning We are dying Shoes There is something in the American heart that wants to destroy everything beautiful The dirty child at our border who walked 500 miles sharing a pair of shoes with her brother And we have no pity we have no shame we refuse love and how could we how could we want something different than love?
Michael Simms is the editor of Vox Populi.
From American Ash, published by Ragged Sky. Copyright 2020 Michael Simms.
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I admire how you say so much in so few words!
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Thank you, Deborah!
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How could we?
The shoes image is devastating. It like an empty raft of the “embarqueros” that made it to the shores of my childhood. Made of the same substance.
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Thanks, Sean. So many of our ancestors came to this country poor and desperate, fleeing war, famine, oppression. And yet we turn away refugees who come here for the same reasons. The way we treat the Central American refugees is unconscionable.
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Those that have happened to us are hard times, perhaps those who lived between the two wars and then the Spanish and then the stupidity of hearing Nazi and fascist words since you had a brother just before, etc. they had hard times to endure .. I don’t know, maybe my optimism prevents me from seeing that the whole world will end.
Then I read your poems and I think that as long as there is the sensitivity to write poems so beautiful the world will always be alive.
The Dragon! Blood left me a hole in my heart and so did Shoes. Thank you.
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Thank you so much, Marina! Beauty gives us hope, doesn’t it?
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Yes I believe it.
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“There is something
in the American heart
that wants to destroy
everything beautiful
The dirty child at our border
who walked 500 miles
sharing a pair of shoes
with her brother ”
When I read it the first time: tears in my eyes. Reading it again, now: tears again for those children. But for America, the planet, and all of us.
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Thanks, Laure-Anne. I don’t see things changing — the destruction of the planet, the oppression of people in the southern continents, the foolishness of our leaders, the greed of corporations…
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I love the urgent plea in this poem! Glen
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I feel the urgency to make change, as do you, as do many people.
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HEARTBREAKING.
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Yes, what we are doing to this planet is heartbreaking.
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