Listen to Justine read this story - Get the RealAudio Player here if you need it.

Pieces to Peace

There will be no check-in table in Arlington in August
with an aging, greying teacher with a red Bic pen
waiting to grade assignments for more than ten miles of Ribbon.
All the pieces belong there;
all the symbols of s nation's yearning for peace.

Who would want to judge the pieces?
Choose one as better than another?
Work of art?
Work of heart?

Who would want to judge the pieces?
Lay aside a child's rain-touched, felt-tipped rainbow
for an artist's gessoed work?

Who would want to say the eighth grader's acrylic basketball court

held more promise than the quilter's careful stitches
holding her aching heart together after the evening's ate news?

Each one makes The Ribbon:
the pizza, poison ivy, pomegranate seeds,
the ladybugs, mid-Hudson bridge,
poetry
and creed;
each one makes The Ribbon.

It is in the addition we find the sum:
for it is one yard
plus one yard
plus each yard of cloth
that we honor the diversity,
that we celebrate the unity.

Each piece makes The Ribbon;
each piece brings the peace.

Amen

Arlington, VA
1985

Back to Poetry Menu
Back to Main Menu