Day 204

The day after Caleb’s death, four year old Mabel
plays that Caleb and her dog
are playing together in heaven. I like to think of Caleb,
with his great tail, bounding again through fields
the way he did when he was young.  I am thinking
of how he might lie down with his full golden weight
beside a child who has no arms, beside a child
whose face is burned so badly no one knows who she is.
I think of Caleb and Mabel’s dog walking, one
on each side of a child whose legs have been shattered 
by shrapnel, to keep him from falling.  Can you fall
in Heaven? Can hind legs that have carried a dog
thousands of miles grow whole
and strong again?  Can a charred face
begin to heal, so a child
who has lost everything can slowly learn again
to move her lips, to call the dogs, to say
this is my name, this is what I looked like, this is who I am.

Day 203

In the morning I learn of the death by bombing
Of Refaat’s daughter and his infant grandson,
child he never met in this life.
In the afternoon I come home and find Caleb dead,
my dog who lived with me for nearly fifteen years.
Who crawled onto Ciel’s lap when he was three weeks old
and announced himself as our dog.  I am thinking of Caleb
caring for Refaat’s grandson in the other world
the way he did for years in my therapy room 
with child after child, themselves traumatized.
Caleb, Golden Retriever, who died peacefully in my kitchen
in the place he loved to lie in, afternoon sunlight
pouring through western windows. 
Refaat’s daughter and her infant son. Dead:
no such peacefulness.

Day 202

In my dream I am standing on slabs of concrete.
There are strips of curtains, 
ashes of what might have been books.
A man comes up alongside me, a young man.
He is carrying something that first
I think is simply a shroud or a blanket,
but he cradles it tenderly.  Without words
he hands it to me.  In the distance I hear
drones, warplanes.  I can hear someone crying.
Voices of children.  He hands me what he is carrying
and I am surprised at its weight.  I fold back
what covers it, see that it’s an infant.
The man now — father? uncle? — has
disappeared.  There is no one standing anywhere
near me.  Slabs of concrete.  I try to see
if the infant is dead or alive, and I 
cannot tell.  It may be breathing a little.
Its face, grayish.  Its hands, cold.  But its tiny chest
is moving, now, up and down.  What
am I going to do with it?  How can I stop its death
from taking it all the way?

Day 201

I am thinking now about the child
delivered from her mother
a moment after her mother’s death.
The mother sitting in her front room,
reading, perhaps, to her three year old, 
her husband sitting in another place
in the same room:  and then the missile,
the doctors frantically taking
the thirty-week infant from the still
body of her mother.  Never to know
the source of that voice. Never
to have that sister, that father.
The child, born of bomb and metal,
panic and the necessity of hope.

Day 200

The waves mount and break
on the shore.  Mount, crest, and break.
One day we will walk together
on the beach in Gaza.
We will sit in cafés that will be rebuilt.
We will talk of poets, of those whose words
surged, gathered force, poured
over the land like the waves
coming in continually from the sea, 
which nothing — not their bombs, 
not their viciousness, not
the snide laughter that covers their lying —
can stop.  

Day 199

My sorrow is so wide I cannot cross to the other bank.
So deep the full moon drifts back and forth
on its surface but cannot touch the silty bottom.
A baby taken by Caesarian from her dead mother.
Who will care for her?  Decaying bodies
of children in the ruins of a hospital.
Do not look for the angel of mercy; she is tending 
the unfound, the unburied. Once, in Borgo San Sepolcro,
I stood for hours in front of Pier della Francesca’s
Madonna della Misericordia:  her broad skirt
sheltering the poor, the broken.  Come now, 
whatever you are that rains mercy down upon us
like the spray that rises from a river.
Give us some coolness, some gentleness.

Day 198

In the tent camps, is the sound of moaning
heard over the sound of the drones?
And the sound of laughter?
What do you lose when you have nothing?
Whose shoes are those?  Whose bag of clothing?
A child comes crying to the medical tent.
He is wounded, his leg is bleeding, a flower
of blood is opening in his chest.  He is crying
for his bicycle: it was new, it was red.  It was fast.
Maybe it was the fastest bicycle in the world.
Maybe it could have taken the boy
far from the bombing, far from the endless lines
for food.  Maybe it could have taken him
into the sea, where he’d watch all the fears unstick,
drift away.  Strands of blood like ribbons, tributaries. 

Day 197

The children are running through a meadow.
It’s an April afternoon, a birthday celebration.
They’re dancing, kicking a ball, playing freeze tag.
Often I am permitted to return to a meadow, Duncan wrote,
Though I remembered the Often for years 
As Sometimes, Sometimes I am permitted.
Sometimes I think what if these children
were in Gaza, the same children, and some of them
could be….The girl in the blue dress,
for instance:  her swing on the bat
stronger than the others’, her running, faster.
If she were there….Permitted.  What permission
Would she have?  What would she do
without those swift legs, which are running now
through the meadow, sunlight pouring
through the high unscathed branches of oaks?

Day 196

The boy is trying to brush his teeth
but his right arm is gone.  He sets the toothbrush down
with his left hand, puts the tube of toothpaste
in his mouth, squeezes it onto the brush
by clenching his teeth.  Only months ago
he was throwing a ball on a street
in front of his house.  Only months ago
his mother, father, sisters were waiting for him
to come into the house for dinner.  His friends
ran through the street, chasing the ball,
catching it.  Now I will have to do it like this
forever, he thinks.  His left hand 
holds the toothbrush, moves it steadily
across his teeth.

Day 195

Eleven children killed in a playground.
They had been living in tents, they were hungry, 
bored.  Their parents sent them to the playground
to play.  I would have done the same.
They were still alive, they had to live.
The playground was still there.
They played, ran, shouted.  Play does not live far
under the skin of children; give it space,
it comes to the surface.  Sunny
April day.  A warmth in the air.  Eleven children.
Some of them siblings.  Parents who lost two. More.
Count their bodies.  Their colorful t-shirts
with words on them, stained with blood.