By Jesus Gijon

In every city there are

People who help out,

A few become saintly

The small spit of sand

Comes from montaña de piedra.

These tiny crystals are not broken

They are bits of a whole.

To not know life as a river is the worst.

Both always follow the possible

Never stopping in the shallows where they can run freely

Never trying to make a lake on a step cliff.

We work to make a city

That lasts forever, constructing

With awe  flowing through our veins

Injected into each brick and lumber.

Suffering to build this city seems to some

Too much.  More correct to make each moment

A sacrifice that builds character.

Atoms rush to atoms.

Particles move constantly and change

Human beings.  Meanness, a mighty monkey wrench

in every serious project

produces fear and fear

spawns hate.  In the materialist manner

it gets us to give up the story

her story, his story, our story. But our bodies are historians of all that’s happened.

The next step evolves out of our body’s decisions.

A frog learns to stay out of danger, it leaps.

A sapling grows to great heights

From knowledge within its roots.

Building a city that lasts forever

The simple is more fascinating than the complex.

Before becoming the butterfly

A larva becomes a caterpillar

Pushing up and down on many legs

Eating for a life transformation

Then in a flash

It jumps off the branch

Pushing and pulling air

Into the common good.

The priority is to cherish the ones

We don’t love because they are human beings.

No one is so good they don’t have some bad

In them.  No one is so bad they don’t have some good in them.

Building a city that lasts forever

Means building human beings.

Very few are born haters

Most seek health and security for all.

Say you lay down sometime in tall grass

On the coast of Northern California

Surrounded by Redwoods next to the light house.

The light house, human made, tells the story

Of rocky cliffs at water’s edge.

The Redwoods circle holding each other’s hands

Embracing safety and security.