Day 257

(from a photograph)

Look at these little girls sitting in a tent.
They look like any girls anywhere.
They’re wearing t-shirts, jeans.  They are sitting upright,
clearly paying attention
to what a teacher is telling them.
Books are open in front of them.  No matter
that it’s a tent and not a classroom.  No matter
there aren’t chairs, tables.  They have made this tent
into a place of learning.  (The teacher is telling them
about fractions:  half this times three-quarters that.
This percent of illness times this percent starvation.
This percent childhood times this percent grief.)
They are writing carefully in their little notebooks.
The tent shakes now and then as bombs explode near them.