Spring arrived this year already worn out with dread and resignation. Fatigued with news and lack of news, wars and impending wars, she placed her sullen tribute before a summer of dark horizons.
In our back yard, the daffodils grow from dried blood. Dandelions riot over the corpses and vines dangle with electric tortures. We pay some of our kids to play back there. They’re good kids. They’ll do whatever their superiors in military intelligence, CIA and the security corporations tell them to do. Weed control.
Spring arrived this year like Operation Phoenix, sprung from the ashes of so many unlearned lessons. We shrink before the gaunt, bloodied old bird. She regards us with a reptilian eye.
“What life have you brought forth?”, she demands.
We are too ashamed to answer. We hope she bursts into flames so we can again sweep her ashes into the hole of our collective memory. But too late. Here lies her incalculable clutch, fecund with new Furies of hatred and revenge.
Spring arrived this year, mission unaccomplished. Nature has swallowed empires before and she will again, as long as life lives. But now Spring arrives brooding, wondering. “Will life live?”
We have polluted the genome, consumed ourselves into looming planetary catastrophe, and we train our children to “Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill!” with the instruments of a death machine that could, if fully unleashed, murder Spring herself.
The shame of Iraq tells us all we need to know to save ourselves. If we would feel it.
JAMES BROOKS is a writer, activist, marketer, and webmaster. Articles have been published by numerous web sites covering the Middle East, investigative journalism and politics. He can be reached at: jamiedb@attglobal.net
