Thank you for your response. ✨
A Lesson on Love and Mercy
Some people just want to be loved by anyone
and they do not care who they fall in love with,
even briefly, even in a burst of carelessness.
We only want to feel Belonging, a deep longing
for human touch, a blue tint of morning skies,
the moment when birds startle with sudden flight
causing shock waves to our hearts.
Love knows riskiness. Love depends on co-operation
and forgiveness when love finds failure. Too many
are denied love, unrooted from secure feelings.
My Hispanic neighbor was deported. I had known her
so long, I trusted she always lived here her whole life.
She owned a business selling Mexican food.
The ICE agents took it as a sign from God to deport her.
Many people blocked the bus taking away people
because of a president’s hate for anyone who is not white.
Apparently, he was never loved as a child, growing up
with a prejudiced father. Hate gets ingrained when unloved.
My neighbor was separated from her family. I do not know
what to say to her husband or her child. How do I explain how
such a leader oversees our country, and how do I explain
why do people fear his retribution, his intense hate?
It makes no sense. But this fact is unbearably true.
I remember her at Mass, praying for miracles,
her status would be permanent. She prayed to an immigrant
who promised Salvation and Forgiveness. Her prayers
were denied by a leader with no forgiveness in his heart.
The leader said he was the only answer to Salvation,
prostrate to me, trust only me.
Some people without love use love as a weapon.
Martin Willitts Jr has 24 full-length collections including the Blue Light Award 2019, “The Temporary World”. His recent books are Ethereal Flowers (Shanti Arts Press, 2023, The Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji (Shanti Arts Press, 2024), and All Beautiful Things Need Not Fly (Silver Bowl Press, 2024).
Bonnie Matthews Brock is a Florida-based photographer, as well a school psychologist. She loves hiking the urban and woodland trails of “anywhere” (and pausing often to shoot photos) with her very patient husband (and often collaborator), Ted. Her images have been featured on the covers of magazines such as Ibbetson Street, Wild Roof Journal, Poesy Magazine, Humana Obscura, and Arkansas Review; as well as on the pages of publications such as Oddball Magazine, Ember Chasm Review, Beyond Words Literary Magazine, Beaver Magazine, and Lateral. Her works are archived at institutions such as Poets House NYC, Brown University, and Harvard University.