Beasts, bigots, build the wall:

the sound of lives

beating like a drum

in our face, a chant,

a cheer we hear

thousands of miles away.

Yet, you sing me a song louder

than the thunder of hate,

breath of bird and caress,

snow sound, breaking of twig,

and I must confess

I need to feel as fresh

as the five inches of snow

we nearly left the world to last night

when the light turned green,

but she couldn’t stop her car

from sliding. The beauty of brake lights

glowing off an infinity of snowflakes,

all seen through a fog-window.

And the sound of twisted metal,

sirens, the spark in my soul

when I realized

I’m still alive,

and still part of this loud,

hurting world.

The dead don’t know anything.

But I know

I walked away from the dead

to the sound of your poems,

songs written from the cries

of your heart,

siren calls begging us all

to look the other way,

for a moment,

look, look, look the other way.