Radio Button

Radio Button

                      

Breaking my habit, I shut off the radio,

Recoiling from news: Australia burning,

Murderers roaming Damascus in tanks,

Pedophiles so photogenic in their denial.

And then I remember that other lifetime,

Listening to the stories at the fire circle,

About the rains failing year after year

And the camel riders burning the village.

I watch the boy seeing through my eyes

So limp in his grandmother’s embrace,

Him too weak from hunger to complain,

Me too lost in the disaster porn to weep.

But like a brown bear in the salmon run

I return to the kitchen again at noontime,

Avocados and mangos calling out to the

Insatiable soul. I tap the power button on.