Day 212

No end to the ruins.  I sit with friends
I have known a long time, talking about Rafah.
No end to the threat of invasion,
the famine, the rotted food, the poisonous water.
Someone today said if the houses were rebuilt
at the rate houses have been rebuilt before,
it would take forty years.  A child
in second grade, provided
that child lived to grow up, would be
middle-aged before the streets were filled
again with houses, shops, gardens.  My friends and I
sit in a café on a quiet street in Berkeley.
People walk by, a boy on a scooter
weaves his way over the sidewalk.
If he’s lucky, his future will look
something like this.  Something he can imagine.