The Earth Around Us

Can we draw the earth around …

        The greed this world encourages,

        that takes from the weak without remorse;

        The lust for power that walks in jackboots

        upon the backs of the powerless;

        The hatred that closes the eyes and mind

        to anything that is good and gentle?

Can we inter forever …

        The intolerance, political or religious,

        that leads to fundamental blindness,

        to a denial of the right of all people

        to choose what they wish to believe,

        and makes of those with differing faiths

        enemies and demons to be exterminated?

Can we seal within the ground …

        The selfishness that claims that I

        deserve more than any of you;

        the indifference that allows evil leaders

        to commit vile acts against their own people;

        that allows the comfortable to turn away

        from those who cannot raise themselves

        above their poverty and ignorance;

        or ignores the children who suffer

        at the hands of those they should trust?

The answer I see to all of these is “no”…

We can't bury these things;

We won't inter these evils;

We resist sealing them within the ground.

Instead, we draw the earth around …

        the bare bodies

        or the coffins

        or the mass graves

        of the victims of these evils.

And in so doing, we bury a part of our own soul.

In time, we will draw the earth around us forever.

© Linda Visman

15^th August 2006

Written for a Poetry Ring Members-only contest, with the prompt “The earth around us”

I couldn’t get out of my head all the awful stories I’d been seeing on the news and in the papers; local, national, and international. I wished we could drag the earth around them. I don’t think that was the intention of the prompt, but that’s what it prompted me to write.