“While it is our moral duty to pursue peace, establish justice, and care for those who cannot protect themselves, not until our own hearts are repaired can we repair the world.”
–Stan Meyers
I’ve never walked for an hour through roads
filled with snow to get to school like my mother,
never had to wear shoes with holes in the bottom
like her brother. I never had to run miles
through a forest to meet the one I loved
like my father whose only transport
was his feet.
But still I wake to losses—
one sister informs me she has cancer,
another says only 10% of her vision remains.
In the world forests fall, ancient glaciers melt.
Skies in my neighborhood, now mostly clear,
in past times turned thick with migrating butterflies,
darkened for a solid hour with passing ducks.
Winter’s garden wears ragged garments.
In Gaza, 6,000 bombs fall on the innocent
in the first six days of war. In the first six weeks
22,000 US produced bombs were deployed.
Rivers of loss push over the banks, flood the world.
Violence abounds.
I can’t heal cancer, bring back forests or glaciers,
restore vision, or heal wounds of war.
These are not in my power.
Yesterday I rode into the forest, air perfumed
and clean, mist suspended between branches,
sun sliding through in vortexes of soft light.
What I know in my bones as I pedal uphill
turn after turn through redwood forest where
once over a hundred years ago loggers cut
down nearly every tree to rebuild the nearby city
destroyed by earthquake and fire is that beauty
wants to heal the world, is ready to save us
when we turn toward it, the web of its iridescent life
wants to make us whole, despite every violence,
every loss.
—
Anna Citrino’s poems have been published in Canary, Juniper, Main Street Rag, the Paterson Literary Review, Waterwheel Review, and Writing in a Woman’s Voice among other journals and anthologies. The author of two chapbooks, Saudade, and To Find a River, and two books, A Space Between, and Buoyant, as well as a Pushcart Prize nominee, Anna lives in Sonoma County, California where she’s learning to draw. Read more of her writing at annacitrino.com
