GRAVITY

The flags aren't flying like they used to.

They're not riding on cars, fastened
To newly bent, molten beams
Wafting in the prickled air
Where gray spines of steel sliced
Open our fortified tranquility,
Where the most we had to fear
Was ourselves.

“Where is the wind?” we call out.
“Why do we still bury our poor
children in the flag draped caskets
of a rich man’s war?”
Have our principles plummeted
Into the craven jaws of gravity
Where a once proud people reveled
In the reasoned hope of humankind?

Where is the wind?
The pennants to their flying?
They’re not waving red, white and blue.
They’re not beaming over the living,
Or wafting in the haggled air
Where bodies coursed downward,
Hands empty of symbols.


© 2007 mrp/thepoetryman