Stupid Meditation on Peace

“He does not come to coo.” —Gerard Manley Hopkins Insomniac monkey-mind ponders the Dove, Symbol not only of Peace but sexual Love, the couple nestled and brooding. After coupling, the human animal needs The woman safe for nine months and more. But the man after his turbulent minute or two Is expendable. Usefully rash, reckless For defense, in his void of redundancy Willing to death and destruction. Monkey-mind envies the male Dove Who equally with the female secretes Pigeon milk for the young from his throat. For peace, send all human males between Fourteen and twenty-five to school On the Moon, or better yet Mars. But women too are capable of Unpeace, Yes, and we older men too, venom-throats. Here’s a great comic who says on our journey We choose one of two tributaries: the River Of Peace, or the River of Productivity. The current of Art he says runs not between Banks with birdsong in the fragrant shadows— No, an artist must follow the stinks and rapids Of the branch that drives the millstones and dynamos. Is peace merely a vacuum, the negative Of creation, or the absence of war? The teaching says Peace is a positive energy. Still something in me resists that sweet milk, My mind resembles my restless, inferior cousin Who fires his shit in handfuls from his cage.