Love this, especially when Jean reads it aloud...

Peace is not
Sterile gauze, a snowflake, an insipid dove
It's feisty and rich

Don't let the war boys hog it all
The spit, the spice and the glamour.

Peace is potency
Reaching and sprouting
Budding and branching

It's lifting things
A good scrap
A hot wrestle and a cool scrub
Cleansing and hope.

Peace is the empowerment of dust
Whispers of the song before origin
As out of seed
The cathedral of the body builds itself

It's spasms and metamorphoses
The vertigo
Of mind dancing
With the fecundator
To the music of need.

Peace
Is little orange bees
Spotted ladybugs on white campions
Late June with a stink of linden
Prickles and burrs

It's wild grapes in a bramble
A tough nut
Lovers churning
Throught the night, at noon, in the morning
A juicy comeuppance
For the grim supressors.

Peace
Is for the star-biters and the rooted
Don't be dainty
Go at it
Hammer and tong.

Peace is not purity
Limp, neat and dry.
It's sexy.

*

- Clifford Browder, poet
from, Manual for the Peacemaker- An Iroquois Legend to Heal Self and Society
by Jean Houston, Ph.D., with Margaret Rubin