L'aura del Campo

A walk towards peace

The limp flag caressed his thin hair as he ambled along his way down the sidewalk. He didn't mind. His father had been a veteran. Came back injured. But alive. No one in his family wanted to see another war. No one exalted flag draped bodies anymore.

The sun warmed his bald spot and invited him to keep walking, encouraged every plodding step. He crossed the intersections carefully. He no longer had the legs to jump out of the way of the impatient. He practiced patience, a virtue he had often heard about but had never met as a youth.

When he passed the Peace Center a stray thought entered his mind. "Peace is more than an end to War." He had spent years working on that, had friends among almost every marginalized population he had ever met. And having traveled he had met most
any human imaginable.

"We are One," he whispered. It was not a radical idea but walls were listening and the enemies of peace were everywhere. Why did people lie about each other? Why was it necessary to have demons to fight? Couldn't everyone just get along? No, Rodney King, we can't. But he wasn't giving up.

He knew his days were numbered. He knew the owls were whispering his name to the winds. But he wanted to see some peace before he gave in. Not until his last hair left his head would he ever give in.

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