Poem #19-Blue Parka

My winter parka is blue
And the ocean is blue
But they are not at all the same color.

Mozart’s Ave Maria is music
As is Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power”
They compete for aural real estate
During my drive time.
What, in the parcel of time
Each commands,
Directs us to understand them both
As music?

At the Thanksgiving table, our friend cannot understand prejudice.
“How could someone care about their daughter marrying
A Muslim?” she asks, and we all nod and shake our heads
At the same time
In the same way
The same incomprehension.
All of us giving thanks
That there are no shades of difference among our gathering.

Never one to leave a teachable moment
Abandoned by the side of the road,
My youngest sister speaks up.
“Imagine instead,” she says.
“Your daughter was marrying a white supremacist.
Would you object to that?”

“Of course,” we all chorus. “That’s different.”

My sister smiles
Ushering in, as is her practice,
The Age of Enlightenment.

This is her gift. She sees the gradations in the colors we all choose.
She hears where music becomes theatre becomes poetry becomes silence.

“It is no different,” she says.
“Can’t you see this is our true religion?”