Oneness

Oneness

The small outboard chugs within the rivulets of time,
keeping close to shallow shores,
guided through narrow straits,
a known course, where family folks have gone for years,
frying up the cat fish, from the now polluted seas.
Certain rituals remain: the blacks lining up with fishing poles
on a bank of the straits;
and the whites in power boats humming along the other.
Sometimes the blacks will slap a child
for making too much noise and scaring the fish.
Not believing in hitting, the whites with cigars in power boats
call theirs "Little Fockers" and tell them to "shut up."
Who knows which is worse:
the hits, the words, the polluted sea or dying fish.
But from this one truth emerges:
cultural differences no longer matter.
Hitting is wrong, and words can break souls.
Power boats pollute, as do oil spills, and our fish, our animals, our trees,
Our world is dying.
What will we do, will we continue to
Sit on separate banks, as we maintain
our cultural rights to hit one child
and call another "Little Focker"?
Meanwhile bombs drop in Iran Iraq Libya
and still the Florida coastline's heaped with dead fish
from waters left murky from the oil spill, and Japan in deep despair.
Harshness doesn't seem to produce healthy fish,
and oil in water doesn't leave us much room for living.
Perhaps awe would do it better: awe of water, awe of fish,
awe of the reifly beating heart shared by all,
awe for the oneness
and absolute reverence for all that lives.
Perhaps we need to leave the narrow straits
and shallow shores, and move beyond
into the vaster sea of one: the eternal love,
reverence for all,
before we are left with
absolutely nothing.