Turn Our Bombers into Hospitals

Y’all, we did it! It’s officially May, and National Poetry Month is behind us. As predicted, I made it about 21 days before losing steam on my poetry generation project this month—I usually make it about 18 or 19 days, so I consider this a win.

With 21 new poems and 9 more I’d like to write in response to Regeneration by

Paul Hawken

, I definitely have enough to keep me busy with writing and revising in the coming weeks and months.

To celebrate, here’s one of my favorite poems from the last month’s work (at least of the ones that feel most complete… there’s a lot of work to do yet). It is in response to the chapter, “War Industry.” To begin, here’s a quote from Paul Hawken:

“The cost of one B-2 bomber totals a new middle school in seventy-five cities, seventy-two solar power plants serving 4.15 million people, thirty-six fully equipped hospitals, and 281,000 electric vehicle charging stations. We pay for a single F-35 Lightning fighter jet with 22 million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single Zumwalt destroyer with new homes that could house more than 58,000 people.”

- Paul Hawken, “War Industry,” Regeneration

This is in response to a Dwight D. Eisenhower quote I’ll share after the poem, but first…

Turn Our Bombers into Hospitals

“At least six of America's prized B-2 bombers are deployed to the island outpost and are now participating in combat operations against the Houthis in Yemen.” - “B-2 Stealth Bombers Deployed To Diego Garcia Have Been Striking Targets In Yemen,” April 4, 2025

Oh kingdom of heaven here in Yemen!
Today the Americans dropped crates
of crayons and science books to stack
on the shelves of new schools that fell 
in one miraculous piece on empty 
streets where the Houthis’ kids 
enrolled last week. They partake 
in some free lunch program, started
after the latest deployment of solar 
panels charged the country’s
economic development and made
a way to buy our wheat, which blew
tariff-free across the sea. So many
seeds of grain have fallen fallow,
but now, there’s bread, loaves
and loaves of it. Saleh bakes
and butters some for Ahmed, then
sells her dough in the market. Men
who in their former fury fought
and stole and crushed and killed 
for power now buzz along the streets 
in Priuses, listening to their songs
of freedom riding the breeze 
through open windows. Along
the Gulf of Aden coast, families
set bonfires and sing, the sky lit
by only fire sparks and stars.

(Image created with AI)

More from “War Industry,” Regeneration:

As promised, here’s that Dwight D. Eisenhower quote to compare the staggering rise in the cost of weapons of war in the last 70 years:

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed… The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than thirty cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of sixty thousand population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than eight thousand people… This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”

- Dwight D. Eisenhower, Chance of Peace speech, 1953

It bears repeating:

This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

On the other hand, imagine what we could do if we did as God invites us and turned our swords into plowshares! Imagine if we funneled all of that money away from destruction and death to construction and life. This is no Pollyanna-ish dream; we could, as the collective followers of Christ and lovers of humanity, care for one another better and put down our weapons of war. We could have such a world.

“Militaries could play a key role in securing our future, because the climate crisis threatens and undermines the security of everything—food, the economy, family, home, farm, land, fish, water, and health. It sounds far-fetched, but the conjoint armed forces of the world could cooperate to defend, secure, stabilize, surveil, and protect…. It can recognize our common interest and realize that the tens of millions of individuals mobilized for war can be deployed to make peace with the earth.”

- Paul Hawken, “War Industry,” Regeneration

Tell me, why couldn’t it be like this?

Thank you so much for hanging in there with me through National Poetry Month—I hope you’ve enjoyed the new poems and the Holy Week poems. I’m excited about the work and what came out of considering these ideas in a way I might not otherwise have done without this focused time.

In my writing world, I’m looking forward now to turning my attention to revisions of my next book, To Say One Million Times, WOW: Essays on Family, Faith, and Awe from America’s Great Outdoors (And Some Hotel Rooms), which will be coming out in the spring of 2026. I have a revision schedule in place and I’m excited to go back and revisit the work I began last year, refining it for publication. From poetry to prose, here I go!

That’s all, from my backyard to yours. Enjoy this weekend, get outdoors, and experience the joy, wonder, and awe of all that God has provided for us in this great, big, beautiful world.