Day 66

(for Refaat Alareer)

You asked us to tell your story.
I begin with a stone.  I begin
with something worn smooth by earth or river.
It may have a voice though I can’t find a way to hear it.
It has surely been held, as I hold it, by others.
A child may have kicked it down a dirt path.
A dog may have carried it in her mouth
from one dusty place to another. What I know
about the stone is what I don’t know. What story, Refaat,
shall we keep telling?  The continuous one where you run
through walls of fire?  Where you walk for hours
through a ruined city, searching
for bread?  The one where you sit and write
while bombs fall everywhere near you?  (Not for you
those bombs or others, though the one
they intend for you will find you.  Has found you.)
What you loved in this world has not stopped following you.
What you named will not stop naming you.
This stone has known hardness and softness, sweetness
and desperation.  Once it was part of a mountain. 
The sky shaped itself around it. It was near
or far.  It was where people looked to find their way.