Day 549

from a photograph

The babies are lined up, side
by side, on a blanket
on the hospital floor.  At first glance
you think this could be a 
photograph of a daycare:
naptime, crowded but quiet
as the children sleep.  Then
you look more closely:  one of them
has a wound to the head; another
is covered so you can’t see
that his lower jaw
is missing; another is still
bleeding from his stomach.
All of them are  wearing
clothes someone dressed them in
this morning:  little striped shirts,
diapers decorated
with rows of baby ducks, pull-on  
cotton pants.  A few
have shoes.  Was this one
beginning to learn to walk?
This other one crawling?  Can
their parents, if they
have survived, remember the sound
of their cries?  Their giggles? Which,
all the rest of their lives now,
they will hear only
in memory.  And only imagine
how those small arms 
would have lengthened, where
those legs would have carried them …