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I was seven. My room was a sanctuary where I lay down in the pillows by the book case under the jungle themed lampshade to read stories. I'd finished one about a long ago battle in a long ago time where people had died for something. I pitied them and left my sanctuary for the kitchen where my parents peeled and chopped potatoes. I told them: I'm so glad human beings got smarter and stopped having wars. What? I'm really happy that wars ended so long ago, and we don't battle each other any more. Was it fear or self-loathing on my parents' faces that evening? They took me to the television, where I still watched The Electric Company and the old Zoom whenever I could. They showed me the evening news and its frustrated coverage of the war that had dragged past my sanctuary all my life. This poem appears in a slightly different form on Poets Against the War |
© 2003 - 2004 Wendy Blake, M.A. All rights reserved.