Love in Search of Peace

Two poems for our path, on a planet unmoored

by Peter Hardie

Photo: Libertinus, CC BY-SA 2.0

1.

it is not refuge wanderers seek
weary, teary, hungry
they come for you and me
they come for life, 
and community.

2.

And the people will suffer war
because they will suffer their leaders, 
bars on shoulders 
bureaucracies 
nuclear nightmares
and worshippers of
murder and madness
on a planet
unmoored
determined 
to start over without us.
in a better world
the only restraints would be
the bonds of family
of camaraderie
of our ties to ancestors
of their love for us.
in this world chains, bars
guns and the clatter of war.
our task is justice
is love.
love in search of peace
we will know joy in struggle,
resolve, commitment.
we have eyes on our 
ancestors and our children
and their grandchildren
Dogon and Dragon
wrap ourselves with time itself
hands on history.
Our path could not be clearer.

Peter Hardie is a veteran member of Liberation Road, the trade union movement, the Black liberation movement, and other social movements of the 70s and 80s in the US. He is a poet, father, sailor, Buddhist, and abolitionist.