When we remember the dead
(who are not all dead rather spirits flown out of their bodies
too-often because of those who were out of their minds),
can we also remember who killed them and why?
 
Can we remember the history so that there can be
forgiveness yet not forgetting the trespasses
onto other people’s sacred lands ― and stop glorifying
the same bloodthirsty partitioned mistakes?
 
Can we think outside the coffin and learn
what the classrooms and news-screens omit,
except to remember on Memorial Day, if at all,
among the grilled meats, smoke curling upward?
 
Because there have been so many battles
you will have to do your own research
to unravel the generics ‒ both domestic and foreign ‒
put forward in this Call To Remember.
 
On TV i see
no drug commercials to combat this amnesia
of what we’ve done to each other,
of who we truly are and what we can still do
as our teachers do:
butterflies from cocoons,
spears of grass through concrete,
the ant you never notice walking
along the same street.
 
And of who we can be:
not the 1980-2001 slogan
"Be All You Can Be" in the Army,
not the way we argue over the surface
but our essence and the being at the cores
of MotherEarth, the electro-magnetic waves
emanating and felt in our hearts
when we tune-in and turn-on
with this ancient channel, and with the Sun
that mighty river of light.