Day 334

Three children who were vaccinated
against polio yesterday were killed
this morning, their house bombed
a few hundred meters from Abubaker’s.
I am thinking now of the rain,
about the children playing outside 
in the rain:  warm rain, summer rain,
that smell of ozone in the air.  Fetid air,
saturated with death; and still the children
splashed in the puddles, opened their mouths
to catch the drops, torrents of rain
pouring down, their hair wet, their clothes wet.
Rain falling as it has always fallen,
washing everything clean, even the little
fallen corpses where antibodies had only begun
to multiply in blood that is spilling.