Marching — all in step —
sleepwalking — kept
by rhythms not our own,
mesmerized by words we heard
somewhere in the past,
remembered that
the chanting of them made us good
but not good enough to last . . .

Marching — all in step —
sleepwalking — kept . . .
Would someone now break time!
disrupt the rhythm — rip the mask from off our eyes,
shout — “Yonder lies the depth
where we all go to die!”

Marching — all in step —
sleepwalking — kept —
chanting as we go, line by line . . .
Would someone stop — ask why
we’ve not been told the truth —
been told the lie?

We walk, yet held in molds;
we talk the words that we all learned
from a book we think we know.

We walk, yet held in molds;
we talk the words that we all learned
from notes we took in school.

O hear! The universe mocks us as we go:
“You chant the words,
but never question why.”

Since June 3, 2006

©2006 Shirley Anne Leonard
Photo by Richard Leonard, 1958