Day 576

Where will we go
to find food
when there is none?  What
will the earth
be able to give us?
You send the older children
to pick weeds. 
Once you planted vegetables
in the garden of your house.
Now there is no garden, no
house, and the soil that was there
is dust, laced with poison
from bombs.  Still,
you survive,  The younger children
make sand cakes, dirt cakes,
decorate them with stones,
pretend they can eat them.
The older children come back
to the tent, their arms full
of grasses. You stand
over a fire you’ve improvised,
stir something that looks
like a soup with a stick
you have whittled so it looks
like a spoon.  One more day.