Michael D Brown’s most recent poem to appear here was Measured, weighed and found wanting (July 2014).

Reaching an impasse
By Michael D Brown

China and Japan
again at odds
over a small island
too small to share,
to parcel into halves
fit for a truce, appropriate
for the maturity of nations;
the past neither completely
absolved with a formal apology,
nor forgotten in retrospect.