a haibun

Every week for about a decade some of us at school have been standing at lunch hour to protest drones, racism, state killing, the death of species & so on. We stand under a live oak while people walk by on their way to lunch. We hold up the signs. It’s an absurd situation & it changes nothing.  

Sometimes the good doctor Ali brings a boom box with Bob Marley & we dance ineptly on the pavement. The changes fall together. Positive & negative fall together as Bob Marley sustains us near the tree. Cesar Vallejo dances as a flea on the back of a squirrel. Blake & Baraka dance as lithophilic microbes inside the rock. We have no proof that they don’t. The science moths dance in the live oak & go about their work of being powdery. The protest is absurd but i admire these forms of absurdity. When the revolution comes, the polite white mothers in the Moraga Safeway will still be shopping for sugary cereals & barbeque sauce. When the time comes, some will rise & some will dance & some will lay our bodies down.