Elsewhere

 

Is there war elsewhere

Maybe where you are

But maybe guns were held up

And the loading of them

Fingers withheld from buttons

Launching missiles

Or the switches from grenades

It’s a question that pandemics

Might quiet war, some

 

There will be violence

People shoot each other

Stab and hit with whatever

Nations have agendas against

Nations, this nation

Among them

 

But might the fear of illness

Death from infection

Become an agenda, too

And might our attention be mislaid

From war, if only for a while

So that we might attend to this

Instead, something the world

Should attend to

 

And could it be that noises change

From the usual reasons to

Others: ailments, hospital workers,

Ambulances for the sick,

Mourning from disease instead

Of how we do each other

 

When it’s done

When that might be

We might all take a breath

And then another

And maybe take a salient moment

Then another

To rethink, if only some

The business of war and the

Destruction only we can make

There might be peace in treatment

Let some make it last

 

C L Couch

 

 

Photo by Jp Valery on Unsplash

 

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