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Judyth Hill is from the
"Everything Matters" school of writing. Listening deeply
to the music of the ordinary, the wisdom of the elders, infants
and others, and the night wind moving through Ponderosa Pines
from her front porch. Then joining with others, to sing "the
good back into the world," through poems, stories and creative
word play. Her writing, performing and teaching come from a deep
commitment to developing the delicate connections between our
political, emotional, cognitive, spiritual, imaginational bodies,
both within the self, and within the social web, to each other.
And all of this connected to our funny bone. Her six published
books of poetry include Presence of Angels, Men Need Space,
and her collection of poems of her land, Black Hollyhock, First
Light, from La Alameda Press.
Wage Peace
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Wage peace with your breath.
Breathe in firemen and rubble,
breathe out whole buildings and flocks of red wing blackbirds.
Breathe in terrorists
and breathe out sleeping children and freshly mown fields.
Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.
Breathe in the fallen and breathe out lifelong friendships intact.
Wage peace with your listening: hearing sirens, pray loud.
Remember your tools: flower seeds, clothes pins, clean rivers.
Make soup.
Play music, memorize the words for thank you in three languages.
Learn to knit, and make a hat.
Think of chaos as dancing raspberries,
imagine grief
as the outbreath of beauty or the gesture of fish.
Swim for the other side.
Wage peace.
Never has the world seemed so fresh and precious.
Have a cup of tea and rejoice.
Act as if armistice has already arrived.
Celebrate today.