FLYING

Come with teeth-grinding, bone-rattling, nail-biting, heart-thumping

Will to contrive another way 

Another stay 

Just a little bit longer

To witness, to suffer, to plan, to report soul-numbing, hymn-humming,

Need to be here

To challenge war with joking retort

In the toilet stall of distance

When you loosen the hold on memory’s fort

Bullets fly in rueful resistance

We’ll gather around a persistent fire made of small-stick-rumbling

Of gangs intent on staying

What would have worked if we’d all been brave

Witness and doer all the same

When thoughts of dying

Return from flight

Like carrier pigeons

You have learned how to die