For Ehren Watada

by Jack Hirschman

This warring government
having lost its people
and having exposed
its lies and its twists
and turns of the knife
in the back of all decency,

has only the guns left
to keep the people in line
in Iraq and here as well,
the guns that make people
afraid because they can
make people dead,

and so when an officer}
like Ehren Watada
from one of the two
newest states to be
legalized as part of
the United States

realizes that the war
declared by his country
is an illegal one, and he
refuses to be deployed
to Iraq, and is illegally
court – martialed,

he has opened a crack
in the cage we all are
fearfully imprisoned in,
and the sun of truth
has streamed in radiantly,
and hopefully others

today or tomorrow will
be touched by the same
luminous courage as
Ehren Watada’s, and the
dominum effect lead to the
highest – ranking officer: Peace.