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If I put up my hand

If I put my hand up,
if I try to have my say,
will anybody listen? 

If I tread softly in a wood of silver trees
and whisper susurrations;
snippets sparsely spoken from my soul -
my supplications rising in the warming breeze,
will my words rustle any of the paper leaves
and stop them falling?

Falling,
f
 a
  l
    l
     i
      n
       g
falling to our precious fragile earth.

Fragile is our world.
Fragile our grasp of what - it - is.
One world. Precious. And us,
just,
holding on,
mere atoms in a surging sea of selfish, greedy strife.
Fragile is our hold, our will, our voice. Our life.

To right a wrong with words
is right.
To hit back with fury risks a monster
roused. Stirred to act; tit for tat.

Tit for tat.

Tit for tat.
An eye for an eye.
Think on that.

If I put up my hand
and cry. And cry. Will it stay
the will of leaders who capitulate and bluster
and risk throwing our lives away.

Let us not forget.
World Peace - that illuminated icon,
precarious as a glass balanced
on some far away, razor-edged horizon.

That hard-fought dream of peace.
Hard-fought on fields in France.
Hard-fought in dessert sands.
Hard-fought on sea,
in sky and mountain lands.
Hard-fought. Hard-fought.
Hard-fought.

Hard. But not impossible to shatter.

Let History speak. I am one. I am weak.
Yet words are not. Words have power;
more power than guns or bombs. Or tears.
Words create change.
Words can. With words we can survive.
Give words a chance.

Please.

Give words a chance.

If I put up my hand,
will anyone hear my words?







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