Bang, Bang, Bang
Bang, bang, bang.
All around the town
We’re building clouds.
Ready or not,
Joy is coming
A guest we may not be in the mood for–
But she’s due for her visit,
And she demands an audience.
When we entertain, we entertain.
So we criss-cross the fraying paper chains and rows of blinking stars
With tears and fake fruit and memories.
We press clean white shirts and breezy flower-dresses
Haul branches and wood throughout our hills.
We will be ready.
We’ve done this before,
When we left our lazy Sundays
And safe, shiny stores, no metal detectors
And the happy theme parks and parents and the rest of all we knew.
We know how to step outside certainty and gently close the door behind us
Hoping our fingers don’t get caught.
All around the town
We will hold together tight
And we will shake–
Hearts, broken
Spines, upright
Eyes, glistening
Lips, praying
Citron scent clinging to our hands
And we will dine with joy under the heavens
And sleep, fitfully, on pillows of faith.
Along with the Fathers and Mothers buried nearby
A new ghost will come to pull up a chair,
A guest we never wanted
A neighbor, a teacher, a father, a builder
And under lion posters, ink not quite dry,
We will sit.
They say: Your whole town must be so sad.
But we know how to swallow sad
And stock up on candy to be grabbed by little hands
And leave our bone-colored houses with rooster red roofs
For the cumulus shelter
Of palm and stars.
Because the outside,
It’s home too.
We are not wallowers,
We are builders.
And so all around our town,
We build.
Bang, bang, bang.
Photo credit: Yonit Schiller Photography