Remember Blessing

When you see blood run like hell
down car-bombed streets or smell the fire
of guns in your red-brick schools,
when you taste the metal
of unjust war or feel the fields
quake from the screams of children
fettered to the long arm
of a godless law,
when you blink,
hoping you will open your eyes
and all these pictures will have vanished
and the world is actually a good place,
but they don’t, and it’s not,
when you’ve lost your faith,
remember blessing.
You will already know sin
is real—how it sucks breath
from the lungs of joy—
and that sometimes, you are guilty.
You will already know pain.
And the evil that mushrooms
when power is at stake.
So remember then
the way you walked through your yard in the summers
of your youth, searching for the only treasure
within reach, a star glittering on the blushing
face of quartz, sun tapping stone
with its magic wand.
Remember the way the soil felt on your fingertips as you dug in.
Remember the ant toting its nugget toward its hill,
the grasshopper leaping
onto your lap, the worm’s nose
rising into the air, as if to sniff your skin.
Remember your brother, or your sister, close by,
digging, too, the dirt’s musky aroma,
your sweat, and the moment of discovery,
lifting the pink fingerprint
of God from the earth.

~Julie Moore