What To Say To Your Captor Poem by Michael Philips

Have you watched the slow caravans of clouds
And felt the earth’s pull as they lean into the sky
Or maybe zeroed in on a single star in the wash of a black night
And know this tapestry of distant heat
Was the same for your ancestors going back millennia
That star may not even exist anymore

You and I are coupled to all who ever lived
To all who ever looked upward
By these things we see
By this water we swallow
By the wistful touch of the wind
By the adoration for our children
By the measure of silence

Headlines and declarations and borders dissolve
Even the best of them
As a child you were a God
Now you can be a savior
A simultaneously prophetic and poetic act before your comrades
Sparing the captive for the single star
Sparing the lit match for the wind