Day 53

Not all labor ends in sweetness –Adrienne.  The line
has haunted me for months, thinking what it takes
to build a house, build a life, construct hour
after hour:  books, meals, language.  To end
like this? not in sweetness
but rubble? A father looking for his child
under bombed concrete, finding
a shoe, a torn piece of a shirt, broken wing
of a wooden plane. He holds
the shoe to his lips, kisses it.  Remembering
how only hours ago he helped the child
put it on, thinking How his small feet
have grown, where
in all this horror can we find him
a pair of shoes that fit?