A man asks, "Have you heard any birds today?" I admit that I hadn't noticed. "Something's strange;" he says, "maybe an earthquake's coming."

 

Downtown, signs have risen against the latest war. I arrive too late to hear speeches, the crowd beginning their march to university

where I catch up—young, middle-aged, old & exotic  comforting each other in the arms of reality's windy gaps.

Someone says, "Violence is in the burned soil filled with the bones/of fathers, mothers, brothers, relatives ,/ from the now-silent ruins/where every living thing burned to death: / a small life that taught us human nature." Church bells toll. Pigeons appear, pecking for crumbs. Wheels crunch early autumn leaves.

 In its eruptive
visions,
    in the plasticity
  of the brain,
may we be
   aspiring toward
            the sane?