While they cut up the earth 

Installed their watchtowers laced with barbwire

Smeared concrete over soil

God’s rain still pounded down from the heavens

And dripped through the cracks in their pavement

 

Memory mixed with minerals / Alchemy of resistance

Awakened with rain 

The limbs and fingertips of roots 

Embraced like old friends in the dark.

 

These roots wove close before any sprout appeared overhead

Flush with soil

Damp with life 

A map of time.

 

Now the men try to draw their own maps 

As if ink is more permanent.

Printing out leaflets from the tree they chopped

Littering their sharp words 

On the tender wound of the stump~

Blood and shrapnel caked over like a scab.

 

And while their bombs choked the open sky,

Starved the living of bread 

And hope,

There is no technology potent enough to poison these roots

Threaded tightly underground

Soft like a pillow, 

Woven with hands that pressed liquid gold from olives

With song that brewed in full bellies

With laughter and the calm of many moonless nights

 

To see the future you only need to reach underground

and rest your head on that fertile pillow and

drift into the ease of a dream;

soaked in this Alchemy of resistance