Want

 

I want a quiet gentle day

I will not have it

Neither will the soldier on the frontline

Nor the persons alleviating pain

While diagnosing

All our ills in hospitals and other,

Medical places

 

Nor those whose designs

For profit

That is profiteering as another verb

Distract away all better drives

And who know peace only

As a cardboard place

Propped up for a time through addictions of

One kind or another

 

Nor will the parents who have

Noisy houses,

Who wouldn’t have it any other way

(nor I)

 

Nor those for whom conflict

Tears apart the skin of life

With open wounds that may

Or may not heal

 

We won’t have a gentle day

Or peaceful

Maybe tomorrow

So much depending on

Convictions that we know

Close as intimacy,

Surprises that we don’t

With what it takes

In between and all together to

Cleanse and keep the wounds

That can get better

Though, mortally speaking,

Will not completely heal

 

We can have peace

The kind that rests

Just fine on scars

 

C L Couch

 

 

I think Want stands next to Ignorance in A Christmas Carol.  Ignorance that is not intelligence, though some would say it must have intelligence, we must have, in order to be un-ignorant.  I disagree.  We see the world, we read a book, we listen to the conversation we are having.  Then we learn.  We grow.  Our ignorance is challenged.

We are trained for a job.  We save.  We grow.  And ignorance again is challenged.  The world becomes more knowing, more prosperous, and peaceful.

Want is challenged this way, too.

 

 

Photo by Carl Cheng on Unsplash

Hong Kong

My dad just finished his eye surgery.

 

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