Iraq
james b. nicola
Remember the pedestrian at night
that stopped to help a stranger on the square
look for a quarter under the streetlight
who said at last, “This is not where I lost
it, but the light is better here!”? The cost
to the helpful pedestrian was the night
wasted, and being made a fool. What light
should do in desperate times, though, is to bare,
not hide, truths. Like the source of our despair:
that the loudest shouts were those of ignorance
inflaming fears of enemies unseen
persuading us there was a quarter there.
No shiny thing’s been lost, just common sense
and lives, the current price of gasoline.
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