Day 522/Ceasefire Day 52

for Mahmoud Khalil

I am thinking now about a man
walking to his apartment on a March night,
his wife walking with him.  Fishing
for his keys, opening the door — his wife
eight months pregnant — when suddenly
there are men pushing their way inside ahead of them.
Their unborn baby, nearly ready for birth,
shudders inside the womb, feels the fear,
the horror.  I’m thinking about the man’s words
at the protest last spring: firm, gentle.  Stop
the genocide, stop the killing of children.
Stop the complicity of the university, 
the government, the corporations.  Stop. Stop now.
They take him away.  They take him somewhere
unknown, a prison, an undisclosed location; his wife,
his lawyer, aren’t told.  Stop the killing
of children, the killing of babies, he’s
thinking.  He’s thinking about his child,
unborn first child, alive, growing
well, nearly ready to come
into this world after so many thousands
of children have been killed.
The city night cold, early March,
his wife shocked and alone inside the apartment,
the baby stirring, then not stirring, then stirring again.

Day 521/Ceasefire Day 51

How did you make it through, the man
asks his friend.  They are sitting together
on a slab of concrete, watching the sunset.
The sky streaked with red, gold.  The man
who has asked the question looks
at his friend:  he has grown thin, has lost
his hair, his hands shake a little.  He too
has changed.  The sky is darkening, sapphire
replaces some of the red. Make it through?
the friend answers.  His answer is only
a question.  The man who has asked
the question lays his hand
over his friend’s shaking hand.  He knows
the losses go beyond flesh, beyond hair.
Four of his friend’s children lie 
under the rubble.  His mother, his sister.
Make it through? the friend says again,
as though to the air, the sky
where now a few stars have begun to appear.

Day 520/Ceasefire Day 50

We grow resistance
as surely as we grow olive trees.
As surely as oranges will ripen
in orchards that will flourish again
our resistance will blossom, grow
full and sweet.
The fields we will plant with greens
will be seeded with courage.  Between
rows of vegetables
our strength and our children’s strength
will sprout tall and vibrant, will nourish
the soil.  Fallen trees
will seep their histories
into the roots of everything,
fallen bodies funnel their memories
into ours.  We will wonder
at what our dreams recall; stories
we never knew will become
our stories.  The resistance we grow
will be hillside, forest, richness
of earth.  Will fill the air
with its wild endurance.

Day 519/Ceasefire Day 49

(for Dr. Abu Safiya)

Where is the doctor now? 
Over two months
since he was consumed by their
vicious machinery.  Where
are his hands, that could find
the precise location of a child’s
pain?  Where are his keen eyes,
his gentle words? Where
are the legs, injured legs,
that carried him over the ruins
of his hospital, into their prisons?
Their torture?  Their twisted
project?  Where
is his grief
for his son, his
colleagues, his patients?  Where
are his thoughts now? To whom
can he speak them?

Day 518/Ceasefire Day 48

He makes a meal
of rice, some greens
he’s gathered.  There’s less
to eat now than there was
last week.  He wonders how far
this small meal will go
to keep his children
from whining with hunger.
Their mother dead, he’s all
that stands between them
and oblivion.  Only days ago
trucks carried in
eggs, milk; today
there’s only what he’s cooking
in this pot.  Still, the fragrance
of rice and vegetables fills the air,
fragrances of others’ pots.
And the cries of children
hungry for dinner, someone
singing, someone hammering
in place new walls, heaving aside
large rocks — all these
smells and sounds make him think
this is almost a city again, almost
the beginning of a life.

Day 517/Ceasefire Day 47

He sits alone on a pile of rocks.
There was a house here.  It was filled
with books, children, laughter,
arguments, music.  He has returned
alone, to find nothing. Nothing
to build with, nothing to shelter him.
He has walked all this way.
Once he was somebody’s father,
somebody’s brother, somebody’s
husband, somebody’s teacher.  Somebody
who sat in a café with friends
and told long stories about his day,
his family, his childhood, his grandfather.
Now he asks what a day is made of.
Now he cannot remember the shapes
of the trees of his childhood, how he sat
for hours in their welcoming branches.
Plucked their ripe or ripening fruit. Ate.

Day 516/Ceasefire Day 46

Just yesterday her father
was playing with her. Laughing.  Then
this morning he found her
cold, not breathing.  He
pounded her tiny chest
to no avail.  She was two
months old, she died
because it was cold, because
her body could not keep
its warmth.  What
to say to this father?  That
he did all he could?  That
his two months with his infant
were sweet, were filled
with hope?  Just yesterday
she was smiling at him,
her whole face radiant.
The merciless inventory
of dampness, cold, her mother’s
insufficient milk, no one
in Gaza having enough of anything
to be sustained, stole her
as surely as an airstrike
might have done.  Merciless
relentless litany of what kills.

Day 515/Ceasefire Day 45

A child of four, Mira,
eating breakfast with her family
in her tent,
is shot in the back of the head
by a sniper. The family
moves quickly, gets her
to a hospital – miraculously
functioning.  The surgeon
evaluates her, prepares her
for surgery.  The child —
miraculously — survives.  She
survives! She’s four.  Six months
later she’s dancing around
the examining room, greeting
her doctors, laughing.  But the critical 
additional care 
she needs can’t be given
here; she’ll have to go
to another country.  And her mother —
who would want
to accompany her —
has been wounded since as well,
is missing a limb.  Who
will be permitted
to go with Mira? If she’s
even permitted to leave.
She’s four.  How
can we preserve her
laughter, her dancing, her words?

Day 514/Ceasefire Day 44

Will it start again, the bombing? the boy
is asking his mother.  She is laying a blanket
over him, all she has to keep him warm.
The nights are cold.  The rains stop,
then start again.  This week, she thinks,
some infants have already died, freezing.
There are things as dangerous as bombings,
she says to herself, rubbing the boy’s
feet to warm them.  Tonight 
they have eaten, the battery
of their lantern is still working,
the skies are still empty.  Other things
besides bombings can kill, she
thinks to herself.  Her son
closes his eyes.  She has not
answered him.  One more night
she has soothed him to sleep.
She sits in the chilly tent, looking out
at the sky, wondering — like
her child — if the planes
are coming again with their deadly cargo.

Day 513/Ceasefire Day 43

Yesterday there was food, today
none.  Trucks barred
from entering.  Never mind, the mother
says to her children:  we will eat anyway.
She goes out with the youngest
to pick greens growing through
the ruins.  Her eldest daughters
gather sticks.  No fuel:  they’ll
build a fire.  Light it with matches.
What they can’t take away, the mother
tells her children, stirring greens
in the one pan they have — what they
can’t steal from us, deprive
us of, is what the land
keeps offering us.  Our land.
The courage of our hands,
our dreams.  They sit,
this mother and her children,
on the broken ground beside
their ruined house, eating.
Second night of Ramadan,
another image of resistance.