Click HERE to listen to my poem Someday When the War is Over
"No one won the last war, no one will win the next war" Eleanor Roosevelt
Someday when
the war is over, we’ll sweep all the rubble, the ruins, and the wreckage, their
bombs left behind, we’ll clear all the roads they blocked, we’ll mend the
bridges they tore, we’ll wipe the sad face off our defaced town.
Someday when
the war is over heather will grow out of the burned grass. Daisy’s will spring
out of bullet holes. Lavender will blanket the cemetery ground.
Someday when
the war is over, we will dare to dream again. We’ll light a candle and rejoice
that we’ve lived another year, grown another inch, learned another lesson
Someday when
the war is over, the burials will come to an end, the river of blood, will turn
blue again
I know when
the war is over, we’ll build a new home, a new village, a new playground.
We’ll count
the years we’ve lost. We’ll learn to forget, we’ll never forget
Yes for now,
the enormous ogre of war is crushing us under its feet, swallowing our peace,
hiding under our beds, shaking us awake at night, shattering all the windows, blowing
down every door we hide behind.
But I know someday
when the war is over, we will smile again, we will dance again, we will sing
again. And after we write the war story, we will write a new story.
When our
grandchildren ask us: “who won the war?” We’ll say:
“To the
bodies we buried in haste, to the bodies we never found, to the futures we
planned but never had, no one won the war.”
Someday when
the war is over, we will carry our satchels to school again, we might not have
crayons, our pencils may be short and dull, but we will write again, we will
draw rainbows again.
We don’t
know how many more years, the war will take, but someday when the war is over,
we will demolish the statues of men who call for war, and grow a garden
instead.
We will have
enough bread, we will have warm blankets,
We will tell
stories around the fire, we will point at the stars
We will
sleep through the night again, someday when the war is over.
