It’s Okay
by Odin Roark

Many see labeled folds and creases
Across forehead and brow
As problems unresolved
As thinking lines

Perhaps when one sleeps
Furrowed wrinkles stay left behind
The hoe of worry
Takes its earned respite
While the world’s hope of harvest
Gathers rest in darkness

How tenuous
This short-lived slumber
Where battlegrounds
Become buried beneath peaceful seeding

Where life’s nourishing fields
Find shelter from evil’s eruptive invasions

Where headlines of contracted mind-waste
About to carry primed destruction
Strapped to their chests
Still breathe

Where children making bullets
Find time to gather casings
Gently pressing blood stained soil
Into their playhouse planters
Believing vines will grow into
Escape routes to sunshine and heaven

Where beyond inevitability
Leaves still flutter
Upon limbs still expanding
Engulfing trees still becoming
Before smashed atom-waves
Incinerate life to ashes

Where when you awake
A bewildered world asks
Why thinking lines now smile
And your tearful heart
Surviving not by breathing alone
Whispers its prescient wisdom
“It’s okay to listen and hear silence
To be at peace
To be happy…

If only in your dreams”