The Tallest Wall
A poem by Michael Hawkes
A flock of doves atop the wall turns black
as it merges with a murder of quarrelsome crows.
The songs of peace now raucous caws,
as hails of stones,
assail the beasts in armoured cars
on the ready to attack.
Graffiti on the wall are black,
scrawled with cinders from the pyre
by boys who clamber up
the stack of cordwood corpses reaching
far above their heads to mark
their slogans ever higher.
Though mile on mile eight metres tall
one day soon the wall will crack
from the force of their desire.
Then in the slits mere orange pips
will sprout to make the defile fall.
The boys will gain their birthright back
with space to prosper and aspire.
17/12/17 – Hawkes
Feature image: Oren Ziv/Activestills.org
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[/col][col size=”10″]Michael Hawkes is a survivor of all the world’s wars. He learned (and loved to rhyme) by torturing the hymns he had to sing at school. A retired West Coast fisherman living in Montreal since 2013, he is an unschooled Grandpa Moses writing an average of five poems every week.
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