by Bonnie Naradzay
Galileo: “Eppur si muove,” and yet it moves.
An NBA player who shall be unnamed
and says this is bigger than the game;
this was after he'd said the world was flat
but some years later blithely explained
he was big into conspiracy theories then
and said we’ve all been there, right?
Meanwhile an island that's part of Taiwan,
just six miles from mainland China,
has been surrounded by Chinese boats
fishing for squid; the boats flood the sky
with lurid green lights to stun the squid,
deplete all fish, send the islanders into despair.
It’s complicated, it’s covert aggression,
nothing can be done, it will only get worse,
like the illegal settlers (during the olive harvest
with the few trees left) on the West Bank
hung him from a tree, burned his feet,
released him to the Israeli police.
My friend says he doesn’t read the news
to protect himself from being sad
but I think why am I alive, otherwise,
if not to know what’s wrong and right,
for I believe in Paradise,
in the separation of church and state,
in the perfidy of pulpits and gerrymandering.
It’s bigger than the game.
Bonnie Naradzay leads regular poetry workshops for homeless people and also at a retirement community, both in Washington DC.