Resistance Poem

It is not that the ocean
itself is evil: far from it.
The ocean out there

makes us here on shore
what we are; indeed
there would be

no shore without it,
but now and then
great storms rise and

send death tides,
death waves,
death.

To disrupt
such deadly waves
coming ashore we must

wade out,
become stone, 
stand still

before it, understanding
that we cannot
stand forever

but while
we do, we
break it

at least a little,
more if we
go in numbers,

more still
if we do not try
to block it

completely
but instead seek
ways to divide

its energy, 
to cause it to dis-integrate
in that narrowest

sense of the word.
It will seem
impossible

because in
any permanent sense
it is, waves

of Evil
will come again
to our shores

as the very nature
of such Evil
is that

it works
through waves, it works
through repetition

and wearing down,
through broad strikes
across wide beaches

and deep harbors, 
it sweeps and swamps
and erodes and 

those who stand
against it must
always stand against it,

for life, for all
the time we have,
and also must teach

the ones who come after
how necessary is
the stand, the breaking

of those waves, the willingness
to break ourselves as a way 
to hold the shore in safety.