No Fences

No Fences

are in view when we
capture world friendships

a Yarmulka, Bourka, Cap,
Fez and Burnoose
together as a parade of strength.

Jose, Avi, Lee, Joseph
and Mikhail, even Abdul sit
shoulder to shoulder

in a pew once held for
mourning services

sticks and stones, suicide
bombs, rubber bullets
now pushed aside.

Friendship is a new song,
where parents watch, with
prayerful thanks

for this scene of peace beyond
their own dreams, angry
voices mutating no longer.

© Richard L. Provencher

First published May 2006 in Poetry Sky, (only English-Chinese Poetry Journal in the world).