Dr. Andrew Calis - Poem Published in the Atlantic

"The Mowing That Woke My Daughter" is a poem about casual violence and how, unless we protect things like life and beauty, we open ourselves up to hatefulness and destruction. The poem moves from my reluctant frustration with mowers for waking up my sleeping child to hoping they'll leave at least a few flowers alive. When they don't, the poem reflects on other, more pronounced moments of violence: my dad, growing up in Jerusalem, seeing destruction all around him, including a helicopter shooting bullets in the hill in his front yard. Those bullets are like seeds: What will they become? What happens when violence blooms into fruit? Ultimately, it's a poem that asks us to carefully consider our actions and choose the path of peace.