Day 416

The doctor lies on a gurney, his thigh shattered,
his small son buried only weeks ago
outside the hospital. His wound, he says,
is no more important than anyone else’s,
His spilled blood no more tragic. He will stay
at the hospital, though the bombs keep falling.
I am thinking of pain unmedicated, wounds
festering, infections left to rage 
with no antibiotics. I am thinking of children
who spoke, standing outside another hospital,
nearly a year ago, begging the world
to listen.  “Please take care of us,” they
said.  We have not.  We have not
taken care.  I am wondering, of those, how many
are still alive.  The doctor, his voice
weakened, is promising his colleagues
that tomorrow he’ll work again.  He will not
fail his patients, whatever little he can do
for them. I sit in my still house,
everything quiet around me.  How 
we have failed all of you,
I am thinking:  we whose bodies
are whole.  We who wake and go about
the tasks of the day, we who live
among the living.