Day 634

for Ahmed D.


Your streets are nothing
but dust and echoes. 
A belt of fire
circles the tents.
You write, flames
raging around you.
What else to do? Nowhere
you can go, nowhere 
to escape this.  In her womb,
your wife carries your child.
The first died under the rubble.
Now this one grows, protected —
if anything can be protected —
from mercilessness, brutality.
You tell me the simple foods
you want to eat:  Chicken.
Bread. Rice.  How could it seem
so impossible to dream
of eating such simple foods?
In a tree stripped of summer leaves
by the bombings, one bird
is singing.  He sits
on a naked branch,
his small throat pulsing
with song. See, we resist!
he reports to the sky, clear
for a moment of smoke
and flames.