Next August
by Danny Adams

We asked them to come, once,
settle with us and share our lives
in peace, and peace is what we’ve known
sometimes — but the longest days, years,
we huddle against fission tirades
burning with a ferocity to make supernovas shudder.
Told how we are the 7-year-olds of the galaxy
too childish to reach increasingly hostile stars,
how all the problems of our shared world
are born from humanity’s faults
while They project eons of their own cosmic mistakes
onto our tiny history. Yet, other days—
The colors of their smiles outshine nebulas
Their generosity is a warm rub of strained human muscles
Their love, in those precious moments between rages,
is a metamorphosis of contradictions intertwined.

They may be gone soon.
Love quenches little thirst to fight—
not this August (as C.M. said about the Commies)
but looking toward the next, our last stand,
battles’ end and redemption for both sides,
anticipating my terrible aloneness of freedom,
I plan for this future
when we belong to ourselves again.

And I already grieve for our loss.