The other day I fell into the war news and couldn’t climb back out. While I should have been in meditation in my Tai Chi class, rockets and bombs were in my mind. My dreams were hellish and it all seemed too freakin’ much. My friend Karen, who runs a crisis hotline, told me it is too freakin’ much and this is why…
News of the World
According to Karen, our bodies haven’t figured out
that we no longer hunt and gather, living in small clans–
that we spill out from cities, ride machines ’round the planet.
She says humans are built for the caves and the steppes
and for knapping flint points, same as we have ever done.
We are built to cope with only such trauma as can be found
within a day’s ride on horseback. We aren’t meant to know
about the child in the well in South America, the shooter
in the Midwest schoolhouse. Distance should shield us
from the bodies in rocket fire rubble across the sea.
It is enough to deal with reading the obits, or listening in
on the gossip of affairs, divorces, grudges and retail mayhem.
Enough to know the little miseries of our own neighborhood.
We aren’t equipped to bear up under the news of the world.
The news of the noonday diner weighs heavily enough.
Note: unpublished draft
