24 June 2020

By Philip Kuepper

(to George Floyd)

Turn guns into oars,
nightsticks into oars.
Turn streets into
bodies of water; minds
in flow,
one with the other;

our bodies, our shells
we row through the material
world; earth,
a room, earth,
the one room
in which we row
through the house of the universe.

To furnish it with compassion
is to expand it, is to make room
for the abundance of our differences.
The beauty is each of us
rows in our own way;
oars, then, our plows
for sharing the field of endeavor.

(20 June 2020)