These days, it seems the sky has some difficulty
remembering light is for softening in the early
morning and at twilight, for ferrying birds
instead of bombs through its curtain.
Ships and schools and cities burn.
People crowd airports, clutching documents
and a few possessions they can't leave behind.
A child chews on the ear of a stuffed toy.
His mother can't stop crying. Meanwhile,
the Filipina tennis player wins another
match, smiling and poised through an opponent's
accusations— her fans were distractingly loud
in the stands with their joy. What is too much
joy? I want to say we work through the strain
of our own battles, but life goes on because
that's what it does. Meanwhile, we clink
glasses of iced mint tea in a Lebanese taverna
by the harbor, where tourists line up to see
the insides of a sloop-of-war from 1854. Fog-
draped, from a distance its masts look almost
shrouded in smoke. If only the madmen of the world
would stop behaving as though they could own it all.
If only we could find a way to continue, to give
our children their own futures not yet broken.
Purveyors of fine poetry since 2003.
