Making Peace

Sometimes when you look for peace
you gaze at the Pacific

where you see the absence
of dishonesty, war, racism, borders.

You see a world rinsed clean
of anger and man-made scars.

I close my eyes to see my peace:
an imagined cabin under the stars

steeped in the wood smell 
of old smoldering ash,

around me a flying geese quilt 
tight as a swaddle,

outside the sound of aspen trees 
shaking, a Blue Jay in a sugar pine.

And what good would it do 
if you told me you feel

like a caged animal in my woods,
and I said my worst nightmare 

is a 75-foot wave in the Pacific 
breaking over my head?

We are quiet beside each other
while a tide swallows our feet 
in separate pools.

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