Paul Ruth
Practice Needed
I see my people crying in the sun.
With souls
fraught for fragile justice,
being decided on the broken backs
wanting to find peace,
only seeing the shadow.
Is the division an invention?
Is it a re-imagination?
Or a fate shared in the past of ancestors?
A forever need to be a protestor.
I want to be agreed with and share this common ground,
but I am blinded by where I cannot stand.
I am inspired by aspiration of opportunistic desire,
only to find the invitation thrown away by my own hand.
A creation needing always a little more creating,
a recipe testifying, “salt to taste.”
And yet to see the shadow is to know the sun
and to stare down the sun is not to see the colors.
Look toward the horizon when dusk or dawn
meets shadow to sun. To see the outline.
To see the colors. To see our reflection in an ocean,
a lake, river, stream, muddy puddle of time.
But if the soul cannot bear to bare,
practice at night with the moon, when all is alone
and your world is empty.
—Submitted on 12/22/2020
Paul Ruth is a high school English teacher and adjunct college instructor from the Metro Detroit area. He has written opinion articles on the state of education in Michigan and makes his aphorisms available through his Instagram account @envisionedaphorism. With his human partner, and their Old English Sheepdog Limerick, he produces the Instagram account @limmieslimericks.
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