Peacekeeping: poem by Kate Copeland

image by Ylanite Nietjuhart, on Pixabay, modified

Peacekeeping

What I learned over years: pray song, songbirds, a difference  

between woe and wonder, between 

my rugged rock rambling and a gentle sky. 

Holding poles apart stays a habit when I cannot find

words for the world, when I try to survive 

a closed question or no question at all

fearing no one fonds me, a falling into distance. 

When moon cuts my arms, I rivet to own terms, and too much 

silence appears to be

not the peaceful scheme, so, mind, what I learned to learn 

better this year: comfort in value-lessons, in song 

to His hands, safekeeping what ever else He grants me to ask.

Kate Copeland’s love for languages led her to linguistics,

her love for art & water to poetry. She is a curator-editor for The Ekphrastic Review and runs workshops and open-mics for several writing networks. Find her poems at https://www.instagram.com/kate.copeland.poems/ and 

TER, Wildfire Words, Gleam, Metphrastics, and Hedgehog Press, among others. Her audio-poetry book, Caterpillar Tracks (Wildfire Words, 2026), will go public in autumn.

(August 2026 issue)