Rain is falling, after a long time of no rain, changing the world.
It is a sad day; a war is happening, undeclared but imminent.

We had some rain on Sunday, after we stood a little while out
by the road with a group of about sixty people from our small
community, holding candles in soda cups, trying to keep them
from flickering out in the wind.

It was not a spirited rally, and not enough people felt like singing
old protest songs--We Shall Overcome or Give Peace A Chance...
We know peace has no chance, that it is flickering out in the darkness.

Still, a memory of peace was among us, the old folks and little kids
that were there, standing there, for no reason but to do something,
feel something. Hoping that our fears will be unfounded, assuaged...

Two women were talking in the dark, I don't know if they knew each other...
I know them both. Once we were mothers at the family school, once we
were playing with new babies.

These women are married to men who have been wounded, though not by war.
One husband was paralyzed in a ski accident, and is still in a wheelchair.
The other has a degenerative brain disease, a frontal lobe mystery.

This quiet man told us that he took a sign "No War For Oil"
out to the intersection and stood there for a few hours, while
many cars drove by, and mostly everyone ignored him, would not
even look at him.

He came to the vigil with his candle, and his kids, and his
wife who says she hardly knows him anymore. He sang softly,
"This little light of mine...," pretty much by himself.

It began to rain, and the people ran to their cars and
went home, with melted candles and broken hearts
over a war we cannot stop but can only hold up a little light,
and hope it will be enough.

.

(View from my north window - November 2002)