SPRING RAIN

I’m so sick of news from the Middle East. 

Where are Americans in the news? Where are the statistics that show the truly unfathomable and ever-expanding inequity between rich and poor here? They fly in and out of the news like pigeons. War and war and war and bombs and death...well, that is the always present flock of pigeons massing around the structures of our empire.

Why the war? Sometimes it’s necessary. We know that. But mostly it seems to be the by-product of men who are jealous, who hate, who are greedy, who are insane, who enjoy it, who have nothing else that excites them.

The weapons industry is like the little hummingbird in the big media world. It flits in and out of view so quickly that we scarcely notice a thing. 

Nary a word seeps out about the financial ties, the profits, the dark side of this industry. America provides nearly half of the world’s armaments.

What if the major media took just one week and spent as much time profiling the arms industry as they do the wars in the Middle East?

War is profitable.

I’m sick of the endless warfare. Most people are. The revolutions in Egypt and elsewhere are exciting and inspiring. Things happen slowly.

But mostly we humans stay very much the same as we have always been.

I was once waiting in my mother’s car while she ran something into my grandma’s house. I pushed in the cigarette lighter. When it popped out I just had to see how hot that red coil was. I was maybe seven or eight years old.

I touched it and of course the skin at the tip of my index finger sizzled and burned. Eventually it turned brown-black-gray. My mom came back to the car and I pretended as it nothing had happened.

We humans have finally reached the point where we are altering the climate of this gorgeous and amazing planet. And yet many selfish dimwits continue to fight for the right to do further damage. I, too, was a dimwit when I inserted my finger in the lighter.

The winds have been strong - over forty miles per hour yesterday. And today the darkness and lightning and thunder and rain showers have descended. 

The world looks greener than ever and the water and the swishing sounds and the birds and the Earth still breathe and move and grow.

I smile and give thanks to another Spring rain.