Peace

A poem written today at the Valley and Mountain Fellowship, Rainier Valley in Seattle. 

preaching consolation
I walk in beauty
my ears sharp to your voice
my eyes peeled for
any stray ray of light

when I visit the time and place
of my own death
I remember the future

when I feed the hungry
I feed my own soul
when I seek peace
I am delivered unto peace
when I listen to you
my voice is magnified

In 2005 I produced a documentary film, Voices in Wartime, that uses poetry to explore the trauma of war, and over the past few years I have spent many hours talking to people about their experience of war. I’ve talked to classrooms full of students, and I’ve hosted community dialogues on war and trauma, and I’ve facilitated audience discussions after screenings of films about war.

(Spoiler Alert! If you don't yet know the end of the Harry Potter story and don't want to know yet, then stop reading!) -- In J.K. Rowling's final book in a series of seven increasingly massive tomes --Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows--Voldemort dies six pages from the end of the last chapter: "Voldemort fell backward, arms splayed, the slit pupils of the scarlet eyes rolling upward. Tom Riddle (Voldemort's alter ego) hit the floor with a mundane finality, his body feeble and shrunken, the white hands empty, the snakelike face vacant and unknowing.

Thirty-five years ago the Vietnam War came to a cataclysmic end as Saigon fell to the victorious armies of the People's Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) and the Provisional Revolution Government of South Vietnam (Vietcong). That event was the capstone to many years of needless killing and mindless destruction.  Human fatalities included including 3 to 4 million Vietnamese from both sides, between 1.5 to 2 million Laotians and Cambodians, and 58,159 U.S. soldiers.