We Ask a Lot of Our Children

By. Judith Ellen Sanders

After the ravages of war
when the whole wide world
is a bloody battleground
comes this gaze
of gentleness unforeseen
How could it have been predicted
when surrounded with such animosity
and anger and bitterness
Oh yes, and secrets never divulged
How could such a worldview of grace been imagined
during the ravages of war?

There's this moment of quietude
the calm after a rageful storm
full of apologies and remorse
Disgusting remorseful hindsight
that is almost as despicable
as the demonic battles themselves
For where is the foresight
where is the insight
where is the conscience
in the moments of the unconscionable?
For god's sake

We ask a lot of our children
To contend with our problems
the baggage we carry
the damage we bring
the sorrow and the despair
that toxic static of unchange
passed on from generation to generation
We jaded elders
we must think of this beforehand
before the cruelty and the insanity
before the violence

We ask a lot of our children
We pray they grow up in a cocoon of light
despite the poisonous path laid by the next oldest generation
and the next oldest and the next
All children are golden children
deserving of love and goodness
We pray they line the paths
of their very own children
with a transforming and loving worldview
so they can one day say
there was peace from generation to generation

We ask a lot of our children.

Judith Ellen Sanders is a writer and painter with a master's degree in science. In her biochemistry classes, she loved the beauty of the molecules she studied as they created graceful intertwining pathways of possibility incarnate. She now writes and paints full-time to put a lens on the gracefulness and possibility that is part of us everyday. Her poetry has been published in the New York Times, Chaleur Magazine, PCC Inscape Magazine, and by the Origami Poems Project which named “Kisses Not Snow” as a finalist in their kindness contest. She is on instagram @judithellensanders.