‘We are far more united and have far more in common with each other than things that divide us.’  Jo Cox MP

In common: first breath, last, a pulse – rest your fingers
on my throat where each beat’s felt. Strangers
or enemies we breathe each other’s air and then
the trees will keep on breathing when we’ve left.
Four billion years since that first chemical reaction
in the mud, and still we share some DNA
with all that moves, is sensitive, takes in, gives out.
So un-unique our flinch or flight from threat,
the restless mix of wanting and not wanting to arrive,
to sit in peace. In common: stomach’s churn, the pull of dread,
hate’s easy reflex, the urge to say ‘Them. Us.’
And yet our fierce capacity to break at unjust deaths,
to fling ourselves at life, raise millions in an hour, to run,
to run, to give up everything we have for what we love.