The Smallest Hope #5/30 2019

    “O immortal gods! Where in the world are we? In which city do we live? What sort of 
    state do we have? Here, there are here in our number, members of the senate, in 
    this most venerable and dignified assembly of the earth, who think about the 
    destruction of all of us, who think about the ruin of this city and even the 
    destruction of the world.”  


                      -Speeches against Catilina by Marcus Tullius Cicero, 63 BCE










I don’t know what to pray for anymore


God bless everything


To ask His will be done


in a single brick


will not keep a foundation from crumbling anyway


God help us all


And maybe


if the news stays muted


it will be all right for a day


As though it isn’t the problem


that’s the problem


but the awareness of it






For all the millions spent


on lofty campaign promises


and best intentions


the insistence we keep our “under God” 


in the pledge and “in God we Trust”


on our money


that maybe 


when the bombs began to fall


we would once have thought


to mean it


Your will be done






Today there are no words


just the guttural groans of those


too weak to say


what they really mean to 


too tired of waiting


for a different answer


than the one they’ve got


but still


palm up


willing to take hold


of the smallest hope


pressed into it