Step Aside

A Poem about Other's Anger

Photo by Johann Walter Bantz on Unsplash

Out of the line of fire
Steps you in unhurried grace
Watching indictments whiz by
Into the empty space.

You needn't sift all the dust
That flows down every stream
Nor burden yourself with speck-finding
In eyes smarting other men.

By this, you keep off the range
When their words at you they aim
With anger and harmful intention
To do as they've felt the same.

For so they assume that in blasting
You with their stored-up anger,
They'll free themselves from those
Consternations that bind and hinder.

But if you refuse to argue
No fisticuffs or hackles to raise,
Their bullets vanish in the distance,
Their cannons no town to raze.

Then they with their anger hear echo
In mind of words they've just said;
Then they to their God can surrender
The fight fought with him instead;

While you wait for tears to catch
Of repentance in the wake of pride,
When you stood not in front of their guns
But with unhurried grace stepped aside.

“Let angry people endure the backlash of their own anger; if you try to make it better, you’ll only make it worse.” Proverbs 19:19 MSG