Zero Sum Universe

Somewhere between the carnage on the road in Baghdad
and the swollen face of the unhappy wife up the street
sits a boy at a piano sending musical chills through the mad
corridors where the bodies have been stacked. Dead
meat.

Somewhere between the decapitated head of the latest
victim and the still body in the doorway of the bank,
a woman climbs a mountain because she appreciates
the sweat and struggle. At the summit she gives thanks.

Somewhere between the high and the low, the best
and the worst, between heaven and hell, all the rest
of us live out our small important lives,
finding the spaces in which we somehow survive.

Charles Deemer