
Jørn Earl Otte
"Do not apologize" -- April 14, NPM

Do not apologize
Perhaps one afternoon you will be walking
in your own backyard, the dandelions freshly
blooming, the yellow irises and purple lilies below in your flowerbed,
the white and blue hydrangea off to the side of the porch,
all signaling a new life, as bumblebees
animate the sky.
In this innocence
you will not notice the wall they are building
around your home, around the front yard’s
vegetable garden, with its crispy heads of iceberg lettuce,
tall green feather dusters leading down
to the orange crunch of the carrots.
You will not notice the wall because
their skulking snake minds are building it with silent
attitudes and your own misappropriated guilt.
Suddenly, it will be there on this afternoon
as though it sprang forth from the grass, as though your neglect
in mowing to community standards provided it the fertilizer
to emerge from the weeds.
They will give you complex instructions, now that you recognize the wall,
on how to maintain your membership
in the life they feel they have been kind enough to distribute
to you, in paper form, in documentation, in noise
from radio and television and computer screen
and cellphone tower and the antennae
you didn’t know they planted on your shadow.
You have done nothing wrong,
but in this moment, with the spotlight from the guard tower
positioned on your face, the blinding light
blocking the faces of the accusers,
you will feel guilty.
You will feel sinful.
You will feel the need to apologize.
I implore you – Don’t.
They will not forgive you for your imaginary
transgressions even if you did cave-in and apologize
for the greens and blues and reds and multi-colored
splatters with which you proudly chose to color your life,
your spirit, your progeny.
So don’t.
Don’t say you are sorry
for breathing life into a dying world.
Don’t apologize for staring directly into the bullshit
they have been peddling since you were born
and being wise enough to say, “No thanks.”
You are the lilies. You are the delicate blue petals
of the hydrangea.
You are the light, shining back into the guard tower
exposing their hypocrisy and hatred and bigotry.
Do not feel guilty. Do not be afraid.
Smile, and tell them,
“This wall is not mine. It is your wall. It is your prison.
It is the way you have kept yourselves from knowing
that the coyote on the hilltop
who visits the undergrowth in my backyard,
is more neighbor to me than the police
or tax collector
or CEO
or parish priest.
This wall is your wall, and you are welcome to it.”
As you turn your back to them, giving
them no more credence, I promise you,
as sure as the sun will rise over the mountaintops
that they have raped,
they will leave you alone.
You and your flowerbed are the antidote.
As they slither away, your smile
will radiate with so much force that the indestructible wall
will melt, will seep into the ground and be ash.
I promise you, the bumblebee will alight on the apple
tree at the corner of your house. The robins will mate
in the shade of the oak tree’s highest branch.
The coyote will come back again, and the small,
industrious seed of hope,
planted when you were born,
will not die.