Dream

A poem inspired by the image of a little boy singing his sister to sleep on a train.

So vast the world with sprawling oceans may,
Become condensed while airplanes do delay.
A southern drawl amidst a foreign tongue,
A tattooed youth, a veteran’s punctured lung.
Look now the world within a glass retreat,
Where equal measures to equal hands do meet,
Make haste! For here, for years an ideal dreamed
A microcosm of the world it seemed
In peace. Where crescent, star, and cross do dance,
Where hate throws down and breaks its crooked lance,
Nor God nor steel nor gun nor sneeze in haste,
Will quicker take this harmony to waste.

And her son sings his girl to blessed sleep,
A somber tune to make the angels weep.