The Birds and Flowers Know
By Hope Church member David Blauw (Good Friday, 2020)
Do the bouncing robins, like slapstick comedians with cocked heads,
Listening for early worms in my greening lawn;
The daffodil trumpets with bursting, fringed bells by the fence line,
Know that a microscopic villain is stalking prey, searching for lungs within which to multiply?
Lying silent, unseen on grocery carts and doorknobs,
Hanging wistfully in the air for ten seconds more, hoping a maskless host will inhale….now!
No more than the Eurasian Nuthatches going headfirst down tree trunks,
And bright crimson Poppies in the 1370 Polish countryside,
Knew that half the village, a stone’s throw away,
Already lay in piles, dead of the Black Death – 4 more since last light – one an only daughter.
Awaiting burial by desperate mercenaries, into rows of muddy, shallow graves.
No more than the wild Turkey and the stately yellow Sugar Maple,
Knew that natives of this land for 11,000 years – elders and children,
Moaned in agony, in their lodges, or lay quiet and limp at river’s edge,
Waiting for the Great Spirit to help.
Typhoid Fever and Smallpox and Scarlet Fever and Whooping Cough,
Slashing through their village and on to the next;
Only knowing there were no agonies like these, before the ghostly strangers came in mammoth canoes.
No more than petite, yellow Bindii flowers, growing at the edge of Limpopo Township, South Africa
Or Forest Canaries just down the road from the singing church,
Knew that there would be a thousand new AIDS infections in the Townships before the week’s end;
5,236 dead by year’s end. Many of them babies.
And a million orphans with dull, fading memories of their frightened parents’ faces.
No more than Nigeria’s blazing Rock Fire Finch,
And native Aloe Vera plant, (to soothe the burn of an accidental trip at the cooking fire),
Can somehow comprehend that Eight Hundred and Twenty-three (mostly children)
Will succumb, this day, in Nigeria alone, to Malaria’s brutal night sweats.
Cries of “Momma” for help. Day after day after day. Year after year. Today.
No more than the dainty white Edelweiss patch, in May 1944,
Just off the rail bed on that shaded mountain grade, ninety-two kilometers northeast of Budapest,
Or the gangly White Stork flying low, to her thick-branched nest atop the small-town mayor’s chimney,
Saw that belching locomotive, towing 13 cattle cars, just above them, just below her,
Packed with standing, sobbing and silent, 30-something mothers, cursing fathers, brave teens,
Trusting toddlers, wizened and broken grandmothers,
Not knowing what was about to happen, as Zyklon B or raging Typhus
Would take their breath away.
Spirit of God, God of Creation, God of Redemption,
Have mercy on us.