PRETEND
for Buddy Wakefield

Pretend the 6th graders in this room have the power
to slash lies with their pens.
Pretend they can use this power even when their
super suits are at the cleaners.
Pretend you can do the math and multiply this room
to get 7 billion.
Pretend every one of the 7 billion is writing a poem
right now - the whole entire planet - grammas
and tiny tiny babies bent over notebooks with the truth
spilling across unlined paper in every color you've
ever imagined.
Pretend we strung a line and hung every single one
of these fact sheet truths on that one line and that
we spent the rest of our lives reading them - time out
for community gardens, fishing, learning folksongs
around campfires - then back to the clothesline. All
our lives. Every written word, every rising sun heard.