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Rafah

It’s Ramadan
A million people
Faithful
For what
I am unsure
Being not so faithful

For life
For rescue
For prophets to keep
Teaching
On the will of God
And to submit

While hospitals
Can’t work
And food cannot arrive
And there’s no living
Room
Or space for peace

There is an endless countdown
For invasion
Until the count is ended
With more shelling
And then many
Many troops
Darkened by masks
What passes for medieval armor
And bearing
Oh
So modern weapons

And in Israel
They wait as well
Still mourning
And some strategize
An ending to Hamas
While others
Simply want for life
After grief
To move them on

They want the desert
Want the mountains
Want the seaside
Want to work
And play
And love
Their way through life
The human way through life

Though there is fear
Of extinction
Here
Too small
Too new a country still
Against
How long were the reigns
Of kings
And queens
And prophets

Both sides
Have hellish prospects
Rooted
And growing
Though the blood and time
That has poured in
After seeds

Branches
That look like tension
More than fruit-bearing possibilities
Seasons
That lack distinction
Not from the wilderness
But from
What we’d say
The human heart
The mind
Both hardened
By reason
And by fright
By reasonable fright

And also anger
Anger at the other
Sometimes at one’s own
And where is life
In all this
Where do the walls come down
Enough
For work and play
The desert
And the mountains
And the shoreline
Of the ocean
To walk in
And look out toward
The horizon
Without a horizon
Blurred lines
But there the sun will set
As if the only clock at work
The moves
With assurance
Of the daytime
And the night time
And that’s all

C L Couch


Photo by nour tayeh on Unsplash