A cry in the wilderness
shudders slowly beneath our skin,
whispering softly,
"All we want is peace..."
Men bear arms
against their brothers
while women hold their sisters,
weeping with woe ~
when will this cycle of raging cease?
We must open our hearts
to the sun's healing gaze
if we are ever to find Wisdom waiting,
lost within this fog
of folly & fury.
Truth leans
& learns its lessons well
as the wind scatters
sacred memories of silence
beyond the reach
of shadows' greedy grasp.
We wail
within these tides
of darkness,
praying
for these killing fields
to fill with blooms,
the lilting laughter
of lilies, instead...
Adding your comment:
Awww. You're gonna make me cry, Richard...& I rarely ever cry. Ok, weird humor time, 'fore I do. 
re: "while remaining yourself" ~ I always tell people that I gotta be me...no one else applied for the job. Too labor~intensive. 
"I am you & you are me & we are all together..." At least, in spirit, we are, my darlin' Scarecrow. Muddy...I've gotta send you an email now. I'm goin' offline for awhile after I do. Need to rest myself & my 'puter a bit. AOL is misbehavin' again. 
I love you, too, my dear, dear Friend. Always have, always will. As the song by BS&T went..."I love you more today than yesterday, but not as much as tomorrow..." Truth. 
I was thinking of bygone years, before women were eligible for the armed forces (here), even though we have long fought our own battles, protecting the ones we love, (even at the cost of their own lives). I also thought of those women who went to work during WWII, sacrificing much & keeping our country going, even building our aircraft while the men (& boys) were at war...& those very same women were there to hold & comfort each other when one received the dreaded message saying their beloved one(s) would never come home again. I'm quite sure it even goes back to the caveman period...if their man (hunter/gatherer) was attacked, I would imagine the woman would aid him in whatever manner she could, knowing she would be left to her own devices, or to those of the attacker. Just as though humanity has thought the world would end since the first caveman saw the first meteor, we have long struggled against the notions of war solving anything, being any sort of solution to adversity between two cultures...but WHEN WILL WE EVER LEARN??? How many centuries, millennia, eons, will it finally take??? The powers that be HAVE TO gather together the Wise Ones instead of the greedy ones, bring in the scientific & spiritual among us, the creative~minded rather than those who would destroy the little we have left to sustain us all. The gardeners...the harvesters...not the ones who decimate the fields & leave them fallow, for the drought to come, leaving only dust behind...Thank you for your inspiration, my Friend." 
