(The Magic 8 Ball keeps telling me to:) Ask Again Later

If putting up signs helps you to feel better –
and you already have: Be Kind!
Here’s one to go next to it: Be Brave!

My mother used to tell me to eat things I didn’t like
because children were starving in China

I did not understand this was intended to be
a lesson in shame for not being grateful
I was appalled – I thought she intended me to feel glad
that I was not the one who was suffering most

The whole world seems to be suffering –
Huge oak trees have toppled here
in our summer hurricane – just ripped out of the ground
top-heavy from branches laden with green acorns

I was surprised to see such shallow roots on the underside
a metaphor for something
but poetry seems too obvious now

or too cryptic and maybe both at once
The children were starving in China
Their beloved Mao had told them to stop farming
to melt down their hoes and rakes and plows
and their cooking woks for the Great Leap Forward 
Each village had its own mound of slag

When they became hungry he told them
to deep till the soil, way beneath topsoil
and to plant seed very crowded together
to encourage better and more abundant crops

Fearing to defy him
the village communes all bragged
of increasingly huge grain quota numbers
Scientific knowledge was scorned  
Scientists were publicly shamed, tortured

The results were predicted and refuted
Catastrophic
Too obvious and too cryptic
So when people compare 45 to Hitler
I say – and Mao!

The green acorns
that won’t ripen for squirrels this winter
do not make me feel glad
to be in the human hemisphere

ask again later
when this will be over
but be brave and kind and hopeful now

Keep writing poetry
because masks and words at a distance
are closer than they appear
obvious and cryptic

signs brave and kind