How can a virus travel
and not love?
Or are we not now all infected
with shame
at our human nakedness?
We don’t want to know our own evil
so profess good, pretending
to smile without hurting.
So painful.
The Tiananmen butterfly warns us:
cyclones we’ve stirred with our grasping
While the world shudders.
We are sick unto death.
Yet the turning sword says to return,
simply cast off our clothing and stand,
embracing the wounds of our neighbors.
Nothing
really dies in the garden.
Image: “Double bow,” by Mike Shell on flickr [Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-ND 4.0) ].