Dear Sister
To Dianne Burford
janine canan
Many years have passed --
you working your fate in the distant forest,
I in the city, wading a congested maze
weighted by outrage and fear,
dazed by the excess, cruelty, horror.
Today I drove to the music store
that towers over America, setting
our rhythms, arranging our actions,
sending human signals over the technological chain --
to hear what your favorite singer, Joni, had to say:
Money is the road to justice.
Preachers preaching love like vengeance,
lawyers teaching anyone can sue;
thieves and financiers parade, while bombs
and laws proliferate -- there's evil in this land.
In the Sixties, long hair falling
over your knees, folded in lotus position,
your ears opened to her song's wistful purity.
Now she wails across the toxic sky:
Nothing savored long enough to understand.
Foresightful Sister, no wonder you wanted to exit
this ditch of corruption and pain.
High in your mountains, where breezes whistle
and a thousand birds converse, do you hear
the chain-saws tearing the world down.
