Martin Willitts, Jr.

Martin Willitts Jr.
 
Pause Button
 
There was a day when everyone was tired of war,
and there was cooing from the simpering light
finally realizing, all terrors are over.
No one could believe their ears. The sputtering
grave-digging silenced their heavy shovels
and they were breaking them over their knees
like twigs. The calm became more than a sliver;
it became a tremendous river not bleeding anymore.
That one day became a month, and people could not believe it.
The ones who started wars were all toppled from responsibility.
 
Now those months were crazy butterflies of agreements
wanting so much light, they could not get enough of it.
This was a time of lush blue hushes of green and seed.
The months decided to become years. Children could play
in the fields without worrying about landmines. Birds
people had forgotten were seen once again.
Out of the cavities of stillness arrived colors
people only sang about but never imagined were true.
 
Years became decades.
The word war was eliminated from the dictionaries
along with conflict and disagreement and enemy”.
There were five hundred meaning of the word peace.
Whole generations of laughter, populations of smiles,
were common as bread being shared among neighbors.
All because one day of solace, one slant of light,
one pause before the re-set button was set again.
 
 
 
Martin Willitts, Jr. is a retired Librarian living in Syracuse, New York. He was nominated for 11 Pushcart and 11 Best of the Net awards. He was the national winner of the 2014 Broadsided award; winner of the 2014 Dylan Thomas International Poetry Contest. His poems have appeared in About Place, Centrifugal Eye, Blue Fifth, Stone Canoe, Kentucky Review, among others. He has over 20 poetry chapbooks including “Late All Night Sessions with Charlie “the Bird” Parker and the Members of Birdland, in Take-Three” (A Kind Of a Hurricane Press, 2015), and 8 full-length collections including “Irises, the Lightning Conductor for Van Gogh’s Illness” (Aldrich Press, 2014). Martin Willitts Jr forthcoming poetry books include “How to Be Silent” (FutureCycle Press), and “God Is Not Amused With What You Are Doing In Her Name” (Aldrich Press).