My Enemy's Children

A poem for the children of Israel and Palestine

Little bird in the morning tide of light,
What do you see in your peeping majesty up there?
This great undoing of rock and refuge,
All song drained from the air.

Little bird, colored feebly and bones so slight,
How tall you seem amid all that is now broken.
Our scholars speechless, in dust we dream
Of lullaby for what has been woken.

Little bird, if you must up and fly away,
Your shifting feet too nervous to stay, do not take
The easy winds. Float instead on this my prayer,
And cross the harrowing warscape.

Little bird, as you fly, ignore the acrid smoke,
And what rage has scratched on the wall.
Fill your lungs with the gossamer sweetness
Of this new day, of God's fresh waterfall.

Then, little bird, on reaching the other side,
Be yourself. Sing. Sing of fizzing waves, of misted hills,
Of sway in the harvest, of flamingoes dipping their bills.
Sing of speckled midnights, contentedly still.

Little bird, though you may go unheard, do not stop.
Your notes of the world as it still might be
I wish on their sleeping heads, and when too
They wake, linger and lift them with melody.

Sing, little bird. Sing.

Sing to my enemy's children.

- ZMB