for an army;
The tiger smiles from the cereal box,
Popsicle sticks embossed
with a pedophile logo.
No one seems to mind.
Compassion is easy, you can do it
while folding laundry.
One would not even know
about the storm outside,
The severed fronds, the battered flags,
the whistling darkness,
All regnant with the possibility
That what I know is wrong,
At least to everyone else, to the night
that denies a right to peace.
Yet they need me, suddenly,
and without a reason,
To speak, in the darkness,
in the storm,
When all the assurance they'd shunned
Has turned uncertain.
They want me to sit with them,
to say something.
