Day 180/181

What do you pray to? C. asked when she knew
she was dying.  I am thinking of what I answered,
fifteen years later.  Certainly nothing I expect to answer me.
What answer for the bodies lying in the road, the children
whose game is which of them falls to a missile?  What answer
for the child who walked from his burning house, the girl
who has no parents?  No siblings anymore.  No one.
What was the last thing she saw as she ran to the door?
And was it better to be the one who escaped?
I heard a man who has nothing to eat talk about his garden.
How beautiful that the roses are blooming.
What do I pray to?  A god who lets these things happen?
A god who thinks it’s all right that children
play at being killed? Whatever it is
that makes that man able to smile,
to love, to go out each day to see how his rose
is opening, opening….