let my words turn into sparks

It's April 30, which means that this is the last poem of the month. Time is kind of weird, right? This is not an April poem, or even a spring poem; it's actually a Yom Kippur poem, which is maybe a little weird to post in April. But for me, this time of year is always a transitional moment, and I think this poem is the right one to be going on with, this year.

On the birthday of the world
I begin to contemplate
what I have done and left
undone, but this year
not so much rebuilding

of my perennially damaged
psyche, shoring up eroding
friendships, digging out
stumps of old resentments
that refuse to rot on their own.

No, this year I want to call
myself to task for what
I have done and not done
for peace. How much have
I dared in opposition?

How much have I put
on the line for freedom?
For mine and others?
As these freedoms are pared,
sliced and diced, where

have I spoken out? Who
have I tried to move? In
this holy season, I stand
self-convicted of sloth
in a time when lies choke

the mind and rhetoric
bends reason to slithering
choking pythons. Here
I stand before the gates
opening, the fire dazzling

my eyes and as I approach
what judges me, I judge
myself. Give me weapons
of minute destruction. Let
my words turn into sparks.

—Marge Piercy (b. 1936), "The birthday of the world," from The Crooked Inheritance (2006), although in this case from The Hunger Moon: New and Selected Poems, 1980-2010 (2012).

See you next year, friends. ♥