$45 billion for cages

Forty five billion dollars for cages

Dear ones, don your armor

the sturdiest, strongest armor

that you have saved in a place outside of memory,

for this day when bulbous cruelty marches with its club

no longer shrinking from daylight.

At your sternum, the chest plate is forged of your breath

and the breath of your mother;

the gorget that circles your neck and guards the pulsing arteries and nerves of your throat, and shields your voice, is comprised of several plates, firm but cleverly flexible, each one the memory of a sweet love you walked with, and drank their kisses at dusk.

The fine chainmail vest, heavy and reassuring with its weight, moving with your movement,

is woven, link by link, from every prayer uttered by your chaverim, who sit with you at Shabbat and mourn and celebrate with you, and you with them;

the cuisses and greaves that protect your legs from blows meant to knock you to the ground,

hard plates sewn cunningly into woolen pants, are your losses, your hard fought failures, and the wisdom you coaxed from each of them over many years.

Your gauntlets, supple leather gloves with metal cupping each knuckle and finger, 

these are every promise kept or aid rendered to another despite adversity;

and your helmet, my dear, softly padded, with a visor covering your face, this is your faith in a world that exceeds your capacity to know or name, the faith that opens you to transformation and solidarity and awe.

Don your armor now:

a terrible army has been raised, fed with fear, eyes gouged out, 

every mercenary promise broken but they march on with their own burning homes at their backs

to the idiot minstrel tune of the glutted, billionaire generals with their sad rocket ships to mars.

When you are ready, you must face them, beloved,

you must step out of your doorway and into the street.

The sight of you will throw them into confusion;

they thought you would surely stay inside as each hammerblow fell, 

ruining lives, poisoning generations,

but here you are, dear one, and forty five billion dollars might cage her, 

and those children, and that earnest young man, and me, but at last

they will run out of cages.

Remember me when the cool wind parts the branches above your garden, and when your gaze falls on your fine chainmail vest, hanging and catching the firelight.