by Lynne Barnes
for my old friends and family across the political divide
I hope you don’t take this the wrong way,
my inkling sense that you might have been hoodwinked.
I mean this as a bridge, an off-ramp from finger pointing.
This is not a diss or dismissal. It’s a hug across the aisle.
I once lost myself in a group mind in the past,
ignoring flaws and facts, and wondering later
how could I have let that happen? But,
I found it hard to listen to anyone telling me that
back then.
So I can understand if you can’t hear the love
in my rapprochement plea, or if you take it
as an annoying missive filled with superiority.
But what if we could talk to each other
beyond our silos, agree perhaps
on a Cronkite-like-mediator-angel force
we might all turn to— to mine for truth?
As old friends and kin, we care about each other sweetly
beneath the macrospheric pressures weighing on us all.
Let us tap our deeper spirit of belonging together
in higher plane of woven hope, let us try to tame
that primal pull that aims toward dismissive othering.
We are precious human Americans, hopeful, powerful,
a force for good in the world. We are a nation of
hard knocks, hellish genocides, crippling inequities
spanning centuries, but we are also brilliant in our
caring-heart warrior spirit bivouacking faithfully
toward that more perfect union inside an imperfect world.
Narcissism is a destabilizing force every time it rises.
We must find a way to tame it firmly, kindly,
if we want humanity to survive.
Please, let us reach out, hold each other tight
in these fast-moving, precarious days.
Are we on a rocket ship to the moon,
or are we going down for the third time?
Or are we somewhere in-between?
Let us come together in an arena of cool, calm love
and try to figure this out, beyond the bluster,
the name-calling, the violence.
Let us go deeply into our best selves,
reach out from our other-hoods
with civil compassion,
invite and honor
empathic conversation.
We are loving family and dear old friends.
We can do this.
Lynne Barnes is a retired psychiatric nurse and librarian who has lived in San Francisco since 1969. Her poetry memoir Falling into Flowers (Blue Light Press, 2017) was a finalist for the 2018 Eric Hoffer Book Award.
