After ripping the sheltering skies
and making them bleed,
you have made us your messengers,
birds without wings, crippled with fear.
Time, color and origin are fading.
The words, the beliefs, the arguments,
the whole litany
of what needs to be said,
all became your hostages.
For now we are your messengers,
mouthing what you want us to say.
We work to hold up the sheltering skies,
to create new gardens, new places of worth,
to reap and to harvest words of comfort
and to unchain our wings.
Take a look at us now, all of our continents,
our bodies of water,
the highest of mountains, the lowest of hills,
the sheep and the shepherds,
the weak and the strong, the fearful and fearless.
Watch as we blend together and
become one under sheltering skies.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dev Berger currently resides in Sacramento, CA. In the past, she worked as a writer/editor, a freelance journalist, and wrote radio commentaries and hosted a jazz program called The Jazz Kitchen. She has been published in magazines, poetry journals, and newspapers. Now that she is retired, she participates in several Sacramento writing groups using the Amherst Writing Method and is currently working on a novelette.