It feels like our world has gone mad. As though there is a madness that has seeped through us that’s so deep and so wide, that it’s allowed people to justify all kinds of atrocities.
We’ve forgotten we are family. Distant cousins. Kin. Each one of us.
When we actually listen to others’ pain and heartbreak, it can feel overwhelming. Almost unbearable.
How can it not? Our collective family is aching.
One of the ways I process is through words. Specifically poetry.
In it, I can feel the rise and fall of our heavy chests. The wailing of mothers. The cries of men — cast aside, ignored.
I can feel the blood pulsing through us — the very ones pulsing through this earth — and find the central artery of compassion. The heart of love that connects us all, despite our social constructs, politicians, or human misbehavior.
I’ve written a poem. A wailing song. My Finnish ancestors had wailing songs. They were not afraid fo sing into human pain and express, in each cry, the heartbreak they feel.
This poem is written in response to all the upticks of killings we’ve seen … especially in the United States. Especially of Black Americans.
This poem also honors the recent deaths of a 9yo autistic Florida boy, Alejandro Ripley, and a young girl in Australia with down’s syndrome, Willow Dunn. Both murdered by their parents.
It’s a poem for us to remember that we are all interconnected and interrelated — to one another and to all things on this earth.
I know there is a way back to one another…
We just have to listen.