Day 232

A mother carrying her infant
stops to help a wounded child
stand, who had fallen.  The child
takes her hand.  He doesn’t know
his name or where his family is.
His arm is bleeding.  The woman
wipes it with her skirt.  They are walking
past rubble.  They are walking past
broken thoughts, past fragments of memory.
Drones cross the sky.  The woman
is thinking of birds:  how,
when they migrate, they have certain markers
they use to guide themselves:  a
particular tree, a hill, even
a building.  There are no
more markers, she thinks, holds
the child’s hand more tightly. Her infant
is softly crying now, and the child
starts crying as well.  The woman wonders
what she will do to try to find
his family, and what
she will name him if she
doesn’t.  The sound of drones
doesn’t stop. She looks
in the sky, sees four, five, maybe six
birds flying.  How, she is
thinking now, will they
find their way?