Day 189

(beginning with Adrienne’s words form Through Corralitos Under Rolls of Cloud)

… who dare claim protection for their own
amid such unprotection? The surgeon refusing
to abandon his patient, mid-surgery, when the sniper
demands he leave the hospital.  Shot in the knee,
captured, taken someplace where they torture him,
put out his eye, release him to crawl
on the filthy, corpse-strewn road. Another doctor,
asked why he does not leave when he can
to save his own life, says — not
without anger — Do you think this is why
I studied medicine for fourteen years,
to save myself and let my patients die?
I am sitting at a desk in a city ten thousand miles away.
My dogs lie on the rug beside me.  They have played
and eaten, now they are tired.  I, too, have played
and eaten.  Sometimes I think, if something happened
and we had to escape this house quickly, which one
would I take first?  Would I run back into danger
to rescue the others?  A game of privilege. 
I am thinking of those who have grown used
to the sound of bombs all night.  Who wake,
counting their children.  When I eat
I think about those who are living on grass and foul water.
And still I eat.