Please click on photos to enlarge.

                   Forgive Me

. . . if I reject for this afternoon
thoughts of mass killings in the trenches,
the polluting of clouds,
the suffering of the world.

I cannot bear considering
the possibility
of the next war
when the last one has not yet ended.

Instead,
I search the earth
for what color it still bears
not stained by blood:

Grass green, hibiscus yellow,
the pink tongue of  innocence
of the puppy whose violence
is still only play.

Prompts for The Sunday Swirl. Wordle 550  are: color cloud search earth war suffering next forgive reject kill trenches mass.  The first and third photos, courtesy of Unsplash. The rest are my own.