Sticks build a house,
Free against the walls of material constraint huffing and puffing,
We raise the roof with our prayers.

The ask of shelter is a Russian bribe,
A whole people maligned,
Peace destroyed.

Who shoulders the guilt of the hungry, crying child.
Who brings peace with bull dozers to
Tear down her cousin’s and her auntie’s dreams for her?

Who has hands and a voice to say we, us, all of us blessed
In the call of a greater nonviolent service.
The earth cares not if the people burn but we suffer as a people,
Generations on with the constraints of the polluted river and
The heat of sins breathing hot on our brethren.

The uniforms of brutality mock the mind into self-justifying barbarity.
Naked and shamed when we could be perfect and free.
The animals, the crying of our damn mass extinction
On another beautiful, warm Spring day.
The bellies sliced, their bloody contents mixing with the mud.
Is it horror or nature or some other well spring and building block
Of the sweet grass spirit?
Massive reparations are due to the South, the West, the Northern hemisphere and
The rising sun of the East.
Each cooking the earth pot,
Opening doors and windows and owning our shelter outright,
Free and clear of the hooligans, the bad boys, the Army.

Save a few dollars here and there,
Let the riparian stream have its banks and bags of sand loosened
Like the belly belt and too tight clutch of ideas
That should be a blue and speckled clutch of eggs.

Too late to lie and carry on as if the rising mud and stench of sewage
Were not the obligation of the city’s ambition.
To rise and be counted with so many among us,
Where is the genius of the long view?

Placate the God’s of waiting and deep time and plastic and
Container ships a mile long slipping through the dredged banks and
Into the buoyancy of a huge artificial lake with the tides pulling and
The pleasure craft liberal with their vices,
Which is a kind of vice by which to handle love,
Safely, like a tweezer of youth picking at unwanted hair,
Here and there.

We are all grazing on a fat, ambient sunshine,
Sure as morning, hot as noon, cooling toward the evening and
Recalled in night’s deep treasure of sleep.
Her combination of ordering the memories,
Plumbing the utility of our fears and filing down the nails of the real to
The dust of ideas, thinly spread or popping here and there in
The unison of the misunderstood quantum void,
Too small and innocent to rule all,
With an iron fist.

By Rolf Stavig
3/25/2025