Imaginary Lines
Travel east or west far and fast enough
You lose or gain an imaginary hour of time,
My bushes divide the piece of earth I claim to own
From the soil my neighbor waters,
Which side of this fence do I maintain?
As Frost remarked,
Walls keep things both in and out,
My view is narrowed and confined
By my need to define and defend
What is mine
From what is yours.
We will not share this earth,
Instead greed tears it limb from limb,
Fear rapes it
For all it’s worth, for all it’s worth.
Down and down we divide the whole;
The Earth made into continents,
Then countries, states, cities,
Neighborhoods,
Then homes and,
Then the homeless.
Longitudes and latitudes,
Languages and customs, rules,
rights and wrongs.
Seattle said,
The earth does not belong to us-
We belong to the earth.
By pretending to own our meager pieces
Of this cosmic miracle,
This regenerating manna-
we have shrunk ourselves needlessly.
Who am I really,
To what small portion of reality
Do I pledge my allegiance to?
I have forgotten
That these imaginary lines are
Imaginary.
I made them up
To secure for myself a sense of order and control.
I can organize and talk about things I do not understand
As if I understand them,
And in this illusionary language
That we have all agreed upon to use
And believe in,
We can converse and understand completely
One another’s delusions.
Where exactly do you begin and I end?
Is this skin that separates us
From the earth, the wind
And each other,
Any more real
Than the fence turning to dust
Between my neighbor’s yard
And my own?
I breathe the molecule of oxygen exhaled by
A Chinaman 200 years ago..
The sweat from my brow
Will rain upon your granddaughter’s garden
100 years from now…
We are so much closer than we know,
Would you close your door,
Withhold food from your brother?
What if
I am your brother?
What if there really are no strangers?
What if enough
is enough?
