Day 526/Ceasefire Day 56

Who will tell this child
that her baby brother is dead?
Every day she dressed him,
every day she held him.  Every day
she wrapped his small body
in a blanket, in her jacket.  Who
will tell her it wasn’t enough? 
Who will let her touch his cold
skin, that could not withstand
this winter night?  Why is it not
spring yet?  Why are there no
tents, no promised rv’s?  Why
wasn’t this baby born later,
earlier, whenever there might have been
some chance of his outlasting the chill?
Who will tell this child
that all she did for her baby brother
could never have saved him?  Never?

Day 525/Ceasefire Day 55

The boy is running across stones
that used to be the front yard of his house.
His mother tended flowers, vegetables.
every day she would come inside
with armfuls of color, green or yellow
squash.  The boy is running,
whispering the names
of his friends, looking for them
under stones, as though they are only playing 
some hiding game.  He sits 
on a concrete slab, takes a piece of bread
out of the pocket of his jacket, breaks it
in two, stretches his right hand
as though there is someone to take it.
Whispers a name.  Whispers, Here.  Eat.
He leans, fills the space, takes a bite
from the proffered half slice, whispers
a few more words to his friend
who isn’t there, who will never
be there, whose name,
like the names of all the others,
haunts the empty air.

Day 524/Ceasefire Day 54

In the house, in the streets, in the field
where once there were rows of flowers,
there are unexploded land mines.
Step on one by mistake,
it’s the end:  a small personal bomb,
reminder of months of bombs
that fell from the sky.  They have stalled
the food trucks, they've stopped
the flow of electricity.  You’re
hungry, thirsty, weary
of being afraid, weary of looking around
to see where the drones are, 
the snipers, the soldiers.  And now
your children play in the field
where once their school stood
and you stand where your house
stood, watching them, your eyes
combing the dust for a glint
of metal, monitoring every move
of their small feet that have survived
thus far …

Day 523/Ceasefire Day 53

All the schools are destroyed,
and in this they are indistinguishable
from the houses, the hospitals, the mosques.
If everything is rubble, where can this child learn? 
Two houses times seventy thousand houses
equals nothing. Nothing is what remains. 
And if x equals the lives of a single family, can
she multiply that by the sum of families
totally wiped out?  And divide it then
by heartbreak, by longing, by the number
of tears that could fill an empty well? All
this child wants is to go to school, but where?
Where can she study the algebra of pain?
How can she learn to measure the quantity
of blood absorbed by the ground?  The ounces
of fear?  The degrees of hunger?

Day 522/Ceasefire Day 52

for Mahmoud Khalil

I am thinking now about a man
walking to his apartment on a March night,
his wife walking with him.  Fishing
for his keys, opening the door — his wife
eight months pregnant — when suddenly
there are men pushing their way inside ahead of them.
Their unborn baby, nearly ready for birth,
shudders inside the womb, feels the fear,
the horror.  I’m thinking about the man’s words
at the protest last spring: firm, gentle.  Stop
the genocide, stop the killing of children.
Stop the complicity of the university, 
the government, the corporations.  Stop. Stop now.
They take him away.  They take him somewhere
unknown, a prison, an undisclosed location; his wife,
his lawyer, aren’t told.  Stop the killing
of children, the killing of babies, he’s
thinking.  He’s thinking about his child,
unborn first child, alive, growing
well, nearly ready to come
into this world after so many thousands
of children have been killed.
The city night cold, early March,
his wife shocked and alone inside the apartment,
the baby stirring, then not stirring, then stirring again.

Day 521/Ceasefire Day 51

How did you make it through, the man
asks his friend.  They are sitting together
on a slab of concrete, watching the sunset.
The sky streaked with red, gold.  The man
who has asked the question looks
at his friend:  he has grown thin, has lost
his hair, his hands shake a little.  He too
has changed.  The sky is darkening, sapphire
replaces some of the red. Make it through?
the friend answers.  His answer is only
a question.  The man who has asked
the question lays his hand
over his friend’s shaking hand.  He knows
the losses go beyond flesh, beyond hair.
Four of his friend’s children lie 
under the rubble.  His mother, his sister.
Make it through? the friend says again,
as though to the air, the sky
where now a few stars have begun to appear.

Day 520/Ceasefire Day 50

We grow resistance
as surely as we grow olive trees.
As surely as oranges will ripen
in orchards that will flourish again
our resistance will blossom, grow
full and sweet.
The fields we will plant with greens
will be seeded with courage.  Between
rows of vegetables
our strength and our children’s strength
will sprout tall and vibrant, will nourish
the soil.  Fallen trees
will seep their histories
into the roots of everything,
fallen bodies funnel their memories
into ours.  We will wonder
at what our dreams recall; stories
we never knew will become
our stories.  The resistance we grow
will be hillside, forest, richness
of earth.  Will fill the air
with its wild endurance.

Day 519/Ceasefire Day 49

(for Dr. Abu Safiya)

Where is the doctor now? 
Over two months
since he was consumed by their
vicious machinery.  Where
are his hands, that could find
the precise location of a child’s
pain?  Where are his keen eyes,
his gentle words? Where
are the legs, injured legs,
that carried him over the ruins
of his hospital, into their prisons?
Their torture?  Their twisted
project?  Where
is his grief
for his son, his
colleagues, his patients?  Where
are his thoughts now? To whom
can he speak them?

Day 518/Ceasefire Day 48

He makes a meal
of rice, some greens
he’s gathered.  There’s less
to eat now than there was
last week.  He wonders how far
this small meal will go
to keep his children
from whining with hunger.
Their mother dead, he’s all
that stands between them
and oblivion.  Only days ago
trucks carried in
eggs, milk; today
there’s only what he’s cooking
in this pot.  Still, the fragrance
of rice and vegetables fills the air,
fragrances of others’ pots.
And the cries of children
hungry for dinner, someone
singing, someone hammering
in place new walls, heaving aside
large rocks — all these
smells and sounds make him think
this is almost a city again, almost
the beginning of a life.

Day 517/Ceasefire Day 47

He sits alone on a pile of rocks.
There was a house here.  It was filled
with books, children, laughter,
arguments, music.  He has returned
alone, to find nothing. Nothing
to build with, nothing to shelter him.
He has walked all this way.
Once he was somebody’s father,
somebody’s brother, somebody’s
husband, somebody’s teacher.  Somebody
who sat in a café with friends
and told long stories about his day,
his family, his childhood, his grandfather.
Now he asks what a day is made of.
Now he cannot remember the shapes
of the trees of his childhood, how he sat
for hours in their welcoming branches.
Plucked their ripe or ripening fruit. Ate.