by Catherine Gonick
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| Source: Image from NewVoices.org via Haggadot.com. Adapted from Dinah Winnick. |
In a just and regenerative world
cooperation and honor
a given
no one would be made a slave
but we are all traffickers
Gloria
and violence would be only
the absence of good
but we’re all mass shooters
In excelsis
our souls
are returned to us pure
aach morning
Deo
and we repollute them
beggared
imaginations can’t be trusted
with much freedom
children must be taught to share
although adults
can’t do it
in the nineteen hundreds
sperm whales learned
to swim upwind
of sailing ships’ harpoons
but now can’t escape our noise
alone on rising
stolen seas
our Jonah spat out
floats on plastic
in our hopeful house
chametz is hunted
a beast sacrificed
another Passover feast prepared
we pray tikkun olam
for whomever shall inherit our Earth
Catherine Gonick’s poetry has appeared in literary magazines including Notre Dame Review, Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Halfway Down the Stairs, and Silver Birch Press, and in anthologies including in plein air, Grabbed, and Dead of Winter. She works in a company that seeks to slow the rate of global warming through projects that repair and restore the climate.