Day 278

(1)

The living stand like stones
in a barren field.  The shadows
of stones reach across
the field, merge, darken
the grasses.  We will not
be cut down, they say.
Our blood will nourish
this soil. You will see
what abundance will grow
from it….

(2)

I saw a man
holding the body of his dead child,
kissing the child’s face, her hands,
as though trying to wake her, as though
trying to send his love far, far
into the other world.  Each kiss
for a year he would be without her.
Ten, thirteen, eighteen.  Whoever
she would have been, she will remain
this eight year old with hair
to her shoulders and burnt
legs, a wound to her stomach
that bleeds, bleeds, into her father’s
chest as he holds
her. What she was
in now an empty sleeve, and soon 
her father will be filled 
with his child’s blood, 
he will walk through this world
carrying her, carrying her.